Early 




torature 



•9WMMM>' 



m&WW& 





m 




:"^*A 



STUDIES 



IN 



Early English Literature 



BY 



EMELYN W. WASHBURN 




OCT 28 1832 , 



'OFWASHl^ 



NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
1882 



COPYRIGHT BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
1882 



Press of 

C. P. Putnam's Son 

New York 




INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

I DO not purpose more in this book than a general 
sketch of so wide a subject as Early English Litera- 
ture. It is my aim to jot down some thoughts gath- 
ered from my own reading, and to breathe into them 
some of my love for the study of this subject. To 
say any thing new I cannot hope, scarce to state any 
thing freshly; one fears nowadays to criticise even the 
simplest ballad, lest some one who loved it no better, 
but who fortunately wrote fifty years sooner, should 
have said the same things about it. And yet one is 
always better for a breath of fresh air; and this may 
perhaps excuse my venturing to speak of our earlier 
literature. E. W. W. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. The Anglo-Saxon Time i 

II. The Anglo-Norman Time 21 

III. Early Ballad Poetry 39 

IV. The Age of Chaucer 59 

V. The Age of Spenser 85 

VI. The English Drama no 

VII. English Prose . . . * . . . . 143 

VIII. Elizabethan Divines 158 

IX. Francis Bacon 188 



Periods in the History of the English Language and 

Literature . . 221 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). 

It is not as lore of the literary antiquary, nor even as 
a pastime for the amateur, charming as such rambles 
among the poets may be, but for a higher end that we 
prize the study of Anglo-Saxon letters. Literature is 
more than the bright flowerage of a time. It is the 
ripest fruit of its history. Its growth is the outcome of 
a people's whole life, from childhood to manhood. 

This is especially true of the old English literature. It 
is a folio of many leaves, yet one book ; from the " dap- 
pled dawn " of Saxon Alfred to the sunrise of Chaucer 
it is one long day, deepening into the full noon of 
Shakespeare. Each period is a phase of the great strug- 
gles of English national life : the shaping of a rough folk 
into a Christian people ; the stormy time of the Norman 
Conquest ending in stronger unity; the awakening of 
the Reformation ; the ripening of the whole past in the 
reign of Elizabeth. Each English writer, from Caedmon, 
who first sung the Creation, to Milton, from Aelfric to 
Jeremy Taylor, from Alfred to Burke, is a living historian 
of the English mind. 

With this thought before us we should examine the 



2 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

beginning and the growth of Anglo-Saxon letters, the 
true spring of our literature. We cannot understand it 
otherwise. For us it is its charm, that in spite of all the 
changes that have swept over the history of England, in 
spite of all the foreign elements that have gone into the 
body of its language ; it remains to-day a Saxon speech. 

The Norman French and the other tongues that have 
given it smoothness and fulness of utterance have sup- 
plemented, not supplanted, our home-born growth. 

It was for a long time the mistaken belief that the 
English was mainly a piece of composite architecture, 
and that French formed the largest and the best part of 
it. We smile at this theory to-day. The English we 
speak is three fifths Saxon, and nearly all that is strongest 
and best is of that stock. For this reason we must 
know something of the early history of that people, and 
of their peculiar traits of mind and character as they 
shaped this growth. 

The Anglo-Saxon speech, like the Anglo-Saxon race, 
is a branch of the Teutonic stock. Other branches are 
the Low German, embracing the Moeso-Gothic, the old 
Saxon, the Dutch, and Flemish, the Frisian and other 
dialects about the Baltic shores ; the Scandinavian, in- 
cluding Icelandic, Old Norse, Swedish, and Danish ; and 
the High German, with its Old, Middle, and New forms. 

We know but little of the tribes who settled in Eng- 
land. It is not even in our power to find any Low 
German dialect just answering to the Anglo-Saxon. In 






THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066.) 3 

many points, above all in construction, it seems nearest 
to the Old Frisic. This likeness is very striking in the 
following bit of Country Frisic of 1834, and the English 
translation by the Countess of Blessington : 

Dead ! hwat bist dou Death ! what beest thou 

Tu hwaem alien bugje, To whom all bow, 

Fen de scepterde kening tade slawe ? From the sceptered king to the slave ? 
De laetste, bestfreon [O. F. friond], The last, best friend, 
Ora uws soargen to eingjen, Our cares to end, 

Dyn gebiet is yn't graef. Thine empire is in the grave. 

But leaving these linguistic questions to our scholars, 
we are mainly in search of the Anglo-Saxon likeness and 
unlikeness to the character of their Teutonic fathers. It 
is with the great Northern stock, out of which had come 
the Edda, the wild Sagas, the heroic song, the mythology 
so utterly unlike that of the Latin races, that they are 
one, both in the original stamp of their mind, their social 
habits, and their religion. 

It was a land of cloudy skies and dark forests that gave 
birth to the worship of Odin and Thor ; to the mystic 
poetry of nature, unknown to the sunny growths of 
classic soil, that deep fancy of the life-tree Ygdrasil, the 
ash whose roots strike down to Hela, the giants of the 
race of Ymir, the bright Baldur, the type of Northern 
chivalry, the Loki, the dwarfs and elves, the original of the 
Pucks and Robin Goodfellows. In his first haunts the 
Saxon knew the same hero-worship of Odin, the same 
life of battle, and sea-wandering song. Yet there is an 



4 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

unlikeness also, which has stamped itself on the different 
branches of the race. 

The Scandinavian and the High German have kept 
more of the early traits of their Teutonic fathers. We 
see in the ideal fancy of the German, in the wonderland 
of his romance, in the mystical tone of his poetry, an- 
other type than that of the Dutch or the English. In 
the broad humor and the practical sense of Platt-Deutsch 
writers like Fritz Reuter, there is a singular likeness to 
the mind of England. 

This idea of mental and moral heredity runs through 
these riddles of history. The German of to-day can sel- 
dom construct a novel ; but in a wild story like " Undine," 
or the fantasies of Hoffman, he is a master. The Saxon 
had, with his Teutonic blood, the practical understand- 
ing, the genius for deeds more than words, which, after 
he had crossed the Channel, made up the mental proto- 
plasm of his children. England's strongest elements of 
statesmanship, of letters, of life, have their origin in these 
Saxon traits. 

But the most faithful picture of the Anglo-Saxon in 
this earlier time is still preserved for us in the fragments 
of three striking poems which have happily survived. 

Of these, the longest, " Beowulf," is a Saga of the 
heroic age, worthy to be put side by side with those of 
Scandinavian birth. The other two are the " Scop," or 
" Gleeman's Tale," and the " Fight at Finnesburg." 

They should be noticed here instead of later in this 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). 5 

sketch, because they belong to this time only. It is true 
that the version of the "Beowulf" which comes down to 
us is later, and indeed the whole poem has been turned 
from a Pagan into a Christian one. Yet beneath the out- 
ward acknowledgment of the God of heaven and the 
church world, we feel the old Pagan spirit. We are borne 
back to the shores of the Baltic, and to the heroic day 
when life was an endless fight with wild beasts and sav- 
age men. And still the soul of Northern chivalry, the 
love of great deeds, the bond of friendship in arms, the 
song of the gleeman, and the feast, all come before us as' 
in this old Saga. It does not show the imaginative char- 
acter of the Edda. There was never with the Saxon any 
such epic cycle as with the Scandinavian. It is a grand 
torso. But it is the very image of the time and the men. 
The poem tells us at its opening of the renown of the 
first kings of the Gar Danes, and the birth of Beowulf, 
offspring of Scyld. He visits Hrothgar, whose hall is 
laid waste by the monster Grendel, a kind of man-fiend 
bred in the marshes, and slays him in deadly fight. It is 
crowded with scenes of death, of feasting over the mead, 
with the speech of the warriors and the tales of their 
hardihood. There is a Homeric freedom only to be found 
in such a day. It has not the sustained flow of the 
Homeric line, nor the wonderful imagination of the 
Norse poetry ; yet a sharp ringing utterance and a 
bright fancy are in it. We hear the clash of spears in 
a wild refrain to the voice of the harper. 



6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Before reading the Saxon poetry, we should glance at 
its structure. It is the same as that of all the Northern 
verse of that time. It is made up of couplets of short 
lines, a dactyle and trochee without rhyme. Allitera- 
tion is the main feature of the couplet. Each first line has 
one or two words beginning with the same letter, and in 
the second line there must be at least one word repeating 
the letter. 

Oft Scyld Scefing 
Scea)>ena )»reatum 
Monegum maeg]?um 
Meodu setla afteah. 

In this alliteration we have the rude anticipation of 
rhyme. It is suited to the Saxon character, like the 
quick, following blows of Trior's hammer. A striking 
proof it is of this home-born strength, that the allitera- 
tive couplet lasted through all the after-growth of Anglo- 
Saxon and Old English, down to the day of " Piers Plow- 
man." 

The following short but telling lines are from this old 
Saga. The first is a picture of the funeral of Scyld, who, 
after the grand manner of the Vikings, was set upon the 
prow of his own ship in all the pride of his golden mail, 
alone, without a comrade, his crown on his head, and his 
weapons about him, and then launched into the sea to 
find his own grave. 

There at the hithe stood The Ethelings rover. 

The ring-p rowed ship, There did they lay him 

Ice girt and glad to go The chieftain they loved, 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). 



The brave ring bestower, 

In the ship's bosom. 

At the masthead the mighty 

Sate with much treasure, 
Gauds from all far away 
Lands freely gathered, 
Never a comelier 
Keel have I counted. 
Decked with war weapons 
And weeds of the hero, 
With bills and with byrnies ; 
Lay on his bosom 
Wealth without number, 
With him to wander 



Into the flood's sway 
Far away floating. 

Stately beside him 
They set the gold banner 
O'er his head blazing, 
Let the sea bear him 
To the great sea gave him. 
Gloomy their minds were 
Mournful and moody, 
No man might ever 
Say forsooth, or the 
Sages in council hall, 
Lordliest heroes, 
Where landed that lading. 



Beowulf hears of the ravages of Grendel in the coun- 
try of his Danish allies, and sets forth to aid them. 



The Visit of Beowulf. 



Stone paved the street was, 
Showing the strait way, 
To the brave comrades, 
Bright shown the byrnie, 
Head and hand locked ; 
Heavy ringed iron 
Sang in their war sarks, 
As they strode onward. 
Then the sea weary ones 



Set their broad shields down 
Round and hard hammered, 
Close by the house wall. 
To a bench bending, 
Brought they the byrnies. 
In a ring stood there 
Spears and stout war gear, 
Gathered together 
With the gray ashwood. 



The Banquet. 



Gay were the laughing guests, 

Gladsome the greeting. 

Beautiful Wealtheowe came, 

Bride of King Hrothgar, 

Gold crowned, she welcome gave 

To the brave warriors. 

Filled she the flagon 

To the first of the East Danes, 

Blithely she bade him cheer 



At the mead banquet. 
Hailed she through the hall 
Youth and helmed nobles ; 
Poured she to every one 
From the bowl precious, 
Then with bright-beaded arms 
To Beowulf bore it, 
Smiling he seized the cup, 
Singing he drained it. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



Fight with the Mother of Grendel. 



So with these bold words, 

Went the Lord of the Weder Goths 

Ocean wave held him, 

The world famous warrior, 

She who the flood's course. 

Had for a hundred years 

Harrowed, blood-thirsty, 

Greedily she grasped him 

In her grim clutches. 

Bore him the sea wolf 

Down to the bottom. 

In the low ocean hall 

In the pale firelight 

Saw he the mere wife 

Mightily struck he ; 

Sang his good ringed sword 

Fiercely its war song, 



Grimly she grasped him 
On the ground threw him*' 
Brandished the dagger, 
Broad and brown-edged. 
Had not his byrnie helped 
And God the Holy. 
Saw he beside him 
A doughty battle bill, 
Glory of warriors, 
Wrought by the giants ; 
Seized he the knotted hilt. 
Struck in his anger, 
Broke he the bony neck, 
Bore through the body. 
Bloody the sword was, 
Bright beamed the warrior 
As stands the sun on high 
Shining serenely. 



The Burial Mound. 



For nim then gathered they, 
His own Goth people, 
A proud burial mound, 
On the earth builded, 
Hung it with helmets, 
War gear of heroes, 
And his bright byrnie, 
E'en as he bade them. 
On the cold hill crest 
Kindled the bale fires, 
Swart from the Swedish pine 
Sailed up the wood reek ; 
Wildly the roaring flame 
Blent with their weeping. 
High and broad stood it 
The mound on the hill-side, 
Saw it from far and wide, 
All the sea pilgrims. 



In it they stored away, 
Stones, jewels costly, 
Treasures of great earls, 
In the earth's keeping ; 
Gold in the ground hid 
Where it yet hideth, 
Bootless to man now, 
As 't was before time. 
Then round the sad pile 
Rode all the war beasts, 
Ethelings, brave earls, 
Their king bewailing ; 
Dirges reciting ; 
All his deeds praising, 
Calling him always 
King among world kings, 
Of men the mildest, 
Of kings the kindest, 
Of his folk fondest. 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). O, 

The " Scop," or " Gleeman's Tale," is a curious portrait 
of the learning of that rude age The bard unlocks his 
" word hoard," and sings the lands and great men that he 
has seen and heard of. Alexander and Attila are placed 
together, and Caesar is King of the Greeks. He passes 
then to the Goths and Saxons, and the courts he has 
seen. " With the Israelite I was, with Hebrews and 
Indians, and with the Egyptians." His last lines are a 
good description of the "gaye science" of that day. 

Thus do we wander 
With our wise sayings. 
We the gay gleemen 
Thro' all lands going, 
Southward or Northward 
Glad of our song craft, 
* * * * 

Giving with bounty. 

The " Finnesburg Fight " is a fragment, more striking 
than " Beowulf," to judge by the few verses left us. It be- 
gins with a speech of Fin, the Frisian prince, who sees a 
gleam of light in his palace, fired by the Danes at night. 

Then wildly cried he, See the moon shining, 

The warrior king, In clouds she wanders, 

This is no dawn of East, Waking the woful deeds 

No flight of dragon ; Hates of the people ; 

Nor burn the cressets Rouse ye, my heroes ! 

Bright in the broad hall, Fight for your dear land, 

Fierce is the flaming. Fight in the forefront. 

Frightened the birds sing, * * * * 

Wild chirps the cricket, Then in the hall rose 

But wilder the war wood, Roar of the slaughter, 

Shield and shaft meeting. Round mighty Guthlafsson 



IO ENGLISH LITERA TURE, 

Lay many corpses. Blazed altogether. 

Sailed then the raven, Battle I never heard, 

Swart and brown sallow ; Nobler of heroes 

In the fierce sword gleam, Fitter for mead feast. 
Seemed it Fin's castle 

Such are the fragments left us of the heroic Saxon 
age. But in the broken torso, with these thews and 
sinews, we can know the race. 

We may now turn to its English history. It is the 
record of a people who dwelt in the island six hundred 
years, to the time of the Norman Conquest ; and who 
became rooted in it so thoroughly as to leave hardly a 
trace of those they uprooted, and to plant there a civili- 
zation which at last swallowed up the Norman. 

This persistent vital force of the Anglo-Saxon is the 
wonder of his history and his literature. We need 
not spend any time on the Celtic, or the Roman period, 
so far as English civilization is concerned. Except in the 
legends of the " Round Table," an epic doubtless woven 
in Brittany by Armoric bards, but whose soil is Britain, 
and a few place names still lingering on English soil, 
there is no point of contact between the Briton and the 
later civilization of England. 

The Roman military sway reaches. from 43 A. D. to 
412. After that stern domination we find the Celtic race 
partly civilized, but weakened. The Anglo-Saxon in- 
vasion followed. In one century the whole country was 
settled by the new race. The characteristic feature of 
this occupation was that the Anglo-Saxons were not 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). II 

military occupants like the Romans before them or the 
Normans afterward ; they were colonists. Six hundred 
years of slowly growing civilization followed with their 
permanent settlement. It was a wild age of border feuds 
between the different English tribes, with the Celt in 
Scotland, Wales, and Southwest England, and raid on 
raid of Danes on the East coast. 

This long period, which Milton called the history of 
the " battles of kites and crows," was followed by the 
welding of the little kingdom into one under Alfred. 

From this point begins a national life and national cult- 
ure. It could not begin until one speech had become 
dominant. Hitherto there had been the two leading di- 
alects, the Anglian or Northumbrian, with which some 
Scandinavian elements were mingled, and the Saxon of 
the South. Besides these there were many local dialects. 

Alfred was born in Berkshire, the West Saxon centre. 
Under his sway rose the arts of peace, schools, churches, 
books, trades. All the remains of the early learning have 
reached us in manuscripts from that time. The oldest 
copy of Caedmon, who was a West Angle, is later than 
Alfred's day. With Alfred, then, in the beginning of the 
ninth century, after three centuries and a half of strug- 
gle, we see the first noontide of English civilization. It 
was to last till the middle of the eleventh century, and 
then, after setting in the Norman Conquest, to rise 
again. 

A slight idea of the language is perhaps the most 



12 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

weighty of our gains from research into the Anglo-Saxon 
period. The study of the growth of a language is the 
study of the brain and heart of the people. The Anglo- 
Saxon is not a dead speech ; it is the heart and pith of 
the English of to-day. Three fifths of the English we 
use, and those three fifths the bulk of the words of our 
household and social life : the words taken from the 
outer world of sight (as sun, moon, tree, stream), words 
borrowed from sound and living movement (crash, break, 
split, crack, shake, whirl), words of the inner world 
(thought, feeling, will, love, grief, good, bad, right, wrong), 
words of action and suffering (walk, talk, smite, draw, 
strike). 

All these are Saxon words. Of all that are not Saxon, 
the larger part have come from the Norman-French, a 
language that has given us words to express our civiliza- 
tion, — words of the more courtly class, the words that 
describe our social life, our cookery, our dress. Our theo- 
logical vocabulary is from the Latin Church ; our scien- 
tific, mainly from the Greek. 

Many of these alien words were of course needed, and 
many of them are happy additions to our language. Yet' 
it was not from any defect in the genius of the Saxon 
speech, but because the incoming of the Norman held it 
in abeyance, that it was compelled to leave untried its 
own word-making gift. The Saxon, as we have seen, was 
a Low German speech. It has, therefore, all the ele- 
ments of its mother-tongue, being strong in sound, and 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). 1 3 

given to hard consonant endings more than vowel sounds. 

But the feature most to be noted is the original com- 
pounding power of the Saxon. It built, as the German 
so happily does, all its words out of its own one-syllabled 
roots. This compounding power, which gives such 
beauty to Greek, such variety to German, was possessed 
in a wonderful measure by the Saxon, and we yet have 
it in many words, as whirlpool, thunderbolt, earthquake ; 
in others we do not see their make-up, as a-corn, gospell, 
gossip, island (ed, water). The loss to our language is 
very great. The poetry of every tongue lies in this com- 
pounding power. The German says, "star knowledge," 
"morning land"; we say, "astronomy," "the orient." 
We see this in Voss' " Homer," that master-work of 
translation ; almost line for line it reproduces the form of 
the Greek. Nor is this feature less important in philo- 
sophic speech. Kant built his word-book, as Aristotle did, 
out of the root-words of his German tongue. This is our 
loss, for the Saxon had the compounding power to a 
degree almost unthinkable now. The root mod — 
" mood," for instance, is found in three verbs, six nouns, 
nine adjectives, one adverb. This wealth of composition 
still remains in such words as eyesight, foresight, insight ; 
in word-endings, like ship — ivorship, clerkship; hed — 
childhood, fatherhood; nes — business, kindness; dom — 
kingdom, Christendom. It is lost in such prefixes, as sib- 
unsib (kin), cenning — edcenning {new birth), 

Again, the Saxon had a very rich inflection. Its nouns 



1 4 ENGLISH LITERATURE* 

had three inflections and fouT cases, each distinguished 
by its ending. Adjectives, pronouns, and articles had 
the same inflection. There was a dual number in pro- 
nouns of the first and second persons, wit — wetwo,gyt — ye 
two. Gender, as in German, was applied to inanimate 
as well as animate objects. The verbs had three conju- 
gations, four moods, and two tenses, the present and the 
imperfect, all marked in the same way by inflection. 

The passive voice only was formed, as now, by the help 
of the auxiliary. The infinitive was indicated by the 
termination an and not by the sign to, which belonged to 
the gerund, a form which we have lost, though it under- 
lies such expressions as "this house to let," "he is to 
blame." They could use two negatives to strengthen 
the negation (nor saw never no man God). The syntax 
again had certain features now lost. The structure was 
more like the German. The words which gave the most 
emphasis to the idea were put first in the sentence, and 
the verb was held in suspense. This inversion gives 
much poetic force to their prose, and is a marvellous 
power in poetry. 

These hints will give us an idea of the Saxon language. 
It was like the people, strong, straightforward, a hearty 
speech. Like the Greek and German, it had the power 
to grow into richer forms. It has been called a rude 
tongue, one that needed the amplification of the Norman 
French. Yet the rudeness was partly that of the age. 
It needed time for its own development. All languages 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). 1 5 

have been rude, Greek and German as well. If we would 
know the wealth that we have inherited, we should learn 
the Saxon. Speech and thought are more akin than we 
are aware of, and the study of Anglo-Saxon is the study 
of the intimate history of the English mind. 

We must not expect to find more than the fragments 
of the Saxon literature before Alfred. The learning of 
that warlike England was in the keeping of the Christian 
Church ; both prose and poetry naturally took the form 
of homily, monkish chronicle, and moral essay. Yet a 
few relics survive which show that the old heroic fire was 
not all gone out ; that the gleeman still sung in the hall 
of the thane as in the day of Beowulf. These are the 
song of Athelstan's victory at Brunanburh, two pieces on 
the crowning and death of Edgar, and a few more frag- 
ments scattered through the dry Anglo-Saxon chroni- 
cles ; they end with the death of Edward and the choosing 
of Harold. Most striking of all these fragments is that 
which describes the fall of Byrthnoth at Maldon. 

The Battle of Brunanburh. 

Here did King Athelstan, Lay in still slumber ; 

Lord of the highborn earls, Then fled the foe away, 

Ring-giver of heroes, Leaving behind them 

He and his brother too, Bodies uncounted, 

Edmund the Etheling, Meat for the sallow kite, 

Earn in the battle And the swart raven, 

Fame ever lasting, The horny-beaked prowler; 

With their swords' edges. Meat for the war Tiawk, 

On the fierce field lay And the fell gray wolf 

Five of the young kings, Ranging the forest. 

********* 



l6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

We pass to the literary history that more fully recalls 
the ripe time of Alfred. The noticeable fact is that 
while there are some writers in Latin who claim our 
honor — above all, Bede, — yet even in the cloister the 
Anglo-Saxon kept its hold. Aldhelm and Asser were men 
of learning for their day. But it is perhaps proof of the 
national type of the English Catholic Church, as well as 
of the love of country, that the Latin did not prevail as 
in the time of Alcuin and Erigena. We have a list of 
very curious Anglo-Saxon works, that are the fruit of the 
seventh and ninth centuries. There are many versions 
of the Scriptures, as the Latin Psalter, with an interlined 
translation. The " Psalms " by Aldhelm, and the " Hep- 
tateuch " of Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 
tenth century, are books remarkable as next in date to 
the Mceso-Gothic Gospels. There are eighty homilies 
by Aelfric, and several treatises on geography, medicine, 
and botany, that give an idea of the science of the 
island. And we owe to these Saxon monks the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle, made up of convent year-books, reach- 
ing down to 1 1 54, and containing the sad and faithful 
history of the bloom and decay of their natural life. 

Very curious, too, are some of the moral writings of 
the time, as the " Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn," and 
a number of quaint riddles. Even the records of char- 
ters, leases, and church laws, are of worth to show how the 
home-born English ruled over the land. It is often said 
that the Anglo-Saxon literature is dull. Yet this very 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). 



17 



dulness presumes a comfortable civilization behind their 
literature. The Anglo-Saxon had not the culture, the 
learning, the romance of the Norman ; but he had a 
more peaceful life at home. The earliest and best of 
their poetry is the " Paraphrase " of Caedmon. In it are 
passages of true imagination, which recall Milton so[ 
strongly, that it is hard to believe he had never read the 
" Paraphrase." The second part, beginning with the 
council of fiends held by Lucifer, is especially remarka- 
ble. The poem is long-spun, and has all the faults of 
the Saxon, of ellipse, inversion, and uncouth line. But 
it is worthy of our study. 

A Description of Chaos. 



Nothing created was 
Save shadow of cavern ; 
Naught was in being, 
Only the broad abyss 
Deep and dim standing, 
Dark to the Maker, 
Empty and idle. 
On it his eyes looked ; 
The monarch strong-hearted 
Saw the sad void around 
Dreadful and joyless ; 
Saw the drear cloud descend, 
In night unending, 
Under the skies above 
Wan lie and wasted, 
Till came the world forth 



Lurid the light gleamed 
Half light, half shadow ; 



By his own word shaped, 
King of all glory. 

Then came the second day : 
Light of the darkness 
Bade Life's guardian 
On the sea flood to stand, 
A glad heaven building. 
The waters rent he, 
He, our high Ruler ; 
And soon he wrought 
The skiey firmament ; 
This reared the Mighty One 
Above the round earth 
By his own living word, 
The Lord Almighty. 



Satan. 



Through the broad hall of hell, 
Like the harsh thunder, 



1 8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Rolled the far-piercing voice With his one footstep ; 

Of the Fell Fiend king, Parted the billows red, 

Calling the countless host As he passed over, 

Of the accursed ones. Satan, the Hell Lord, 

Shook the strong underworld Hater of holy things. 

There is a rich collection of other poems of the seventh 
and ninth centuries. The poems of Cynewulf have much 
poetic worth, and that of " Judith " has much strength. 
The allegory of the Phcenix, the short poem on death, 
and the address of the departing soul to the body are 
quaint bits of Saxon fancy, and there are still other frag- 
ments of great value, although much, without doubt, has 
perished of the poetry and prose of the Saxon time in 
the wild storm of the Conquest. 

The study of Anglo-Saxon must end with the greatest 
of them all, the king and writer and Christian, Alfred. 
It was a wonderful life, remembering all the strife of the 
time, the steadfast toil, the long years before he built the 
kingdom, and yet the love of learning, the wide knowl- 
edge seen in his writings. 

All that is wise in the England of that day is gathered 
in Alfred. Bede's " Church History," St. Augustine's. 
" Soliloquies" (Confessiones), Gregory the Great's ''Di- 
rections to the Clergy," Orosius' " History," and Boethius' 
" De Consolatione," made a library in those dark days. 
His work was chiefly translation, yet it is so inlaid with 
his own thought that you feel his personality. The 
most valuable part of the " Orosius " is the careful report 
he gives of the Northland, made by his best seaman. 



THE ANGLO-SAXON TIME (600-1066). 



J 9 



In the " Boethius " we listen to the wise king, as he 
writes the consolation given him in his own battle of life, 
sometimes in hearty prose, sometimes in a poetic strophe 
not without its charm of fancy. 

" Well, O man, well ! Every one of you that be free, 
tend to the good, and this happiness; and he that is in 
bondage with the fruitless love of this world, let him seek 
freedom. For this is the only rest of all our labors. This 
is the only port always calm after the storms and billows 
of our toil. The golden stones, the jewels of all kinds, 
and all the earth boasteth will not enlighten the eyes of 
the soul." 



So oft the calm sea, 
Clear as the grey glass, 
Winds from the southward 
Wildly are stirring ; 
So oft a well spring, 
From the hoar cliff wending 
Cool and as crystal pure, 
Creeps it right gladsome, 
O'er the earth streaming. 
But from the stony hill 
Great crags have tumbled, 
And in the troubled tide 



Lie they together. 

Dim is the water now, 

Wild the brook wanders, 

Turned by the rock aside 

From the true channel. 

So will the cloudiness 

From thy heart creeping 

Sadden the sunlight 

In thy soul shining, 

And the true flowing thoughts 

Trouble how sorely. 



We have now made a rapid, but, I think, a fair judg- 
ment of the Saxon literature. Let it be remembered 
that the Anglo-Saxon time is to be compared with the 
same epoch in Continental Europe ; not with the time 
that follows it. The Anglo-Norman had more of intel- 
lectual culture ; but the Anglo-Norman time begins with 



20 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the Middle Age, the time when all Europe had its awaken- 
ing in philosophy, romance, art. The Saxon period is 
the dark age of Europe. If we compare France and Ger- 
many during the same time with England, we shall find 
that the culture of the Saxon is not of an inferior type. 

With the reign of Alfred, the Anglo-Saxon growth 
reached its first stage. Fifty years (849-901) had done 
much for learning, art, order. This growth continued yet 
another hundred and fifty years, and then sank into a 
long sleep. A new rising was to come. The Anglo- 
Saxon spirit was not to die. All that was strong in the 
English character, all that made the freedom, the self 
governed manhood of the State, much that was lasting 
in the mind and the speech, was the fruit of those six 
centuries of Saxon, but home-bred civilization ; and was 
to outlive the Conquest, to take in new elments, and come 
forth in its ripe manhood. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 

We reach here the second period of English literature, 
the time when it received the shaping influences of Nor- 
man speech and life. It is a brilliant history. It is the 
opening of the Middle Age. It is the time when Eng- 
land first came into full knowledge of the wider world of 
Europe, and thus felt the two great forces which molded 
that age, — Feudalism and the Roman Papacy. Hitherto 
England's growth had been only that of an insular com- 
munity. The people still kept the free ways of their 
Saxon ancestors, and of the Saxon church ; yet England 
could not always remain apart from the life of Europe, it 
must have for its own development this blending with 
the civilization of the Continent. The Conquest was the 
bridge from the mainland to the island. We are begin- 
ning in our day fairly to read this fact, and the most valu- 
able addition to our knowledge that has been made by 
recent historians is to teach us that the Conquest was a 
very important step in the development of England ; 
and that it followed other steps as real although not so 
sudden. Already in the day of Edward the Confessor, 
the courtly tone, the manners and speech of Normandy 



22 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

had crossed the Channel. The French language was now 
for three hundred years to reign at the court, in the castle 
of the baron, in the church, the profession of law, the 
schools. The Norman genius was to mold the English 
life into a finer form, and the English speech into a fuller 
beauty and grace. From this refining process the Saxon 
speech emerges, no longer the Saxon of Alfred's time, 
but greatly enlarged and enriched, and ready for a great 
English literature. We are to study this transition time, 
when all the wealth of fancy and story, of monkish chron- 
icle, wild legend, chivalry, and song is made ready for 
Chaucer and Spenser. Two lines of inquiry lie before 
us : 

1st. The changes wrought upon the language. 

2d. Its literary history, especially that of the English 
metrical romances. 

We have found in our study of the language that the 
English of to-day is a compound, rather than intimate 
grammatical fusion of the earlier speech with the Nor- 
man-French. Its grammatical base is Saxon, though 
many of its words are French. Recalling the chief feat- 
ures of the Saxon, the inflection, the harsh admixture of 
consonants, the word-making power, the inversion and 
complex shape of the sentence, let us follow the leading 
steps in the changes that were wrought upon it by the 
Conquest. 

a. Many old Saxon words are now lost. This was 
natural. French was spoken by the gentry, Saxon only 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME '1066-1500). 2$ 

by the peasantry and the monks of the old church. The 
homely words of the " lewd folk " remained. But those 
which pertain to the court, the banquet, dress, ornament, 
pleasure, literature, drove them out ; as the barons seized 
the old lands and built their castles. Thus the whole 
refined vocabulary arose — garden, flower, terrace, cham- 
ber, mansion, venison, mutton, beef, veal, gentle, peasant, 
art, poesy, pen, lesson, reason, sentiment, memory, — an 
unnumbered host of words like these usurped the rights 
of the home-born speech. 

And thus the creative power of word-making, which we 
have seen in the Saxon, was almost wholly lost. Eng- 
lishmen, when the Norman day had gone, found the 
words already supplied that would have naturally grown 
out of the elements of their own speech. 

Natural changes in the inflection of noun, verb, and 
adjective took place. It is wholly like the change of 
French and Italian from the Latin. A half-taught monk, 
an Englishman among Normans, in the lapse of years lost 
knowledge of the nicer shades of Saxon speech, and in- 
stead of the old endings used the particles. The case- 
inflection of nouns was indicated by prepositions — of, to, 
for, with, in. Only the genitive retained the inflection. 
The plural had already its later form of s. The adjec- 
tives lost the inflection altogether. The pronouns were 
docked in the same way. The dual was dropped, the 
only trace left to us is in between and betwixt, — " amidst 
two." Gender was given up in the nouns that stand for 



24 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

inanimate things. This doubtless was a gain, although 
we lose much of the old life of the language. The defi- 
nite and indefinite declension of adjectives is lost; the 
feminine endings of adjectives and pronouns disappear. 
Many final vowels are given up. The verbs lose their in- 
flections, and they are filled out by the auxiliaries have 
and be. The old change of vowel in preterite and parti- 
ciple is supplied by the weak ending in ed, wox, waxed. 
In the syntax and prosody, too, there were changes. 
The French structure of the sentence, less periodic and 
involved, took by degrees the place of the Saxon style. 
This change is specially to be seen in the poetry. 
Rhyme, though sometimes found in Saxon before the 
Conquest, now becomes common, chiefly the feminine 
rhyme. 

Such are the general features of the changes wrought 
by the Norman Conquest upon Anglo-Saxon speech. Of 
course they took place by slow degrees. It has been the 
aim of some of our learned Saxonists to mark the whole 
time from the Conquest to modern English into certain 
great divisions, as: 1st. The Semi-Saxon period from 1066 
to 1250, — the time when the language was in its state of 
disintegration. 2d. The Old English, from 1250 to 1500, 
— the time of restoration., This, again, is divided into 
Early English, horn 1250 to 1350; and Middle English, 
from 1350 to 1500, — the age of Chaucer. 

We cannot separate the eras of these linguistic changes 
as we do the strata of different geological epochs. They 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 25 

merge into each other ; yet in the main the classification 
is borne out by the literary remains of the time. During 
the whole Anglo-Norman period the language of the 
gentry is French. The old speech lingers among the 
people and the monks of Saxon cloisters. To them we 
owe the preservation of all that is left to us of their 
speech. 

Some of the best landmarks of the Semi-Saxon period 
are the " English Chronicle " to 11 54; the " Ormulum," 
a metrical paraphrase of part of the Gospels; and Laya- 
mon's " Brut," a rhymed version of Wace's " Chronicle." 
It is from Geoffrey of Monmouth's " Latin History " that 
the French of Wace is taken, and the poet has added 
some Breton legends to the original Welsh story of Geof- 
frey. The " Brut " is the work of an English priest in 
Worcestershire; its date is about 1205 " There was a 
priest in the land," he writes of himself, " whose name 
was Layamon ; he was son of Leovenath : May the Lord 
be gracious unto him ! he dwelt at Earnly, a noble 
church on the banks of Severn, near Radstone, where he 
read books. It came in mind to him and in his chiefest 
thought that he would tell the noble deeds of England, 
what the men were named, and whence they came who 
first had English land." 

It was indeed a great work. It gave a past history to 
the island, and though it was fictitious it formed a bond 
of interest between Norman and Englishman. In its 
32,000 lines there are not more than fifty words of 



26 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

French. But the changes we have marked in the lan- 
guage are found already. The old alliterative metre is 
kept up, and there are a few rare rhymes. Layamon is 
the last of the old Saxon poets, with all their rude 
strength and simple but telling metaphor. 

King Leir and his Daughters. 



Bladud hafde enne sune, ha asldeste dohter haihte Gornoille, 

Leir was ihaten, ha o5er Regau, 

Efter his fader daie, ha hridde Cordoille, 

He heold bis drihliche lond, Heo wes ha 3ungeste suster, 

Somed an his liue, A wliten aire uairest ; 

Sixti winter. Heo wes hire fader al swa leof 

he king hefde hreo dohtren Swa his a3ene lif. 

Bi his drihliche quen. 



Coming a hundred years further down, we find a work 
which marks the beginning of Early English. It is 
Robert of Gloucester's rhymed " Chronicle," about 1280. 



" Syr King," quo Merlin tho, " gif thu wolt her caste, 

In the honour of hem, a werk that ever schal y laste, 

To the hul of Kuldar send in Irlond, 

After the noble stones that ther habbet lenge y stonde, 

That the treche of geands, for a quoynte werk ther ys, 

Of stones al wyth art imad, in the world such non ys. 

Ne ther nys nothing that me scholde myd strength adown caste." 

The king somedel to lyghe, tho he herd this tale. 

" How myste," he seyd, "such stone so grete and so fale 

Be y bro3t of so far lond ? " 

" Syre Kyng" quoth Merlin, " ne make noght in ydel such lyghing, 

Far in the farrest stude of Afric geandes while fette, 

Thike stones for medycine, and in Irlond hem sette." 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 



27 



But the best memorial of Saxon poetic life is from a 
poem by an unknown writer, toward the end of Henry 
the Third's reign, " The Owl and Nightingale," a long 
poem in rhymed couplets of eight syllables. The verse 
flows with wonderful ease, and displays much fine fancy • 
we meet with nothing like it again until we come to 
Chaucer. 

The Owl and Nightingale. 



Hule thu axest me, ho seide, 
Gif ich kan ene other dede, 
Bute singen in summer tide 
And bringen blisse far and wide 
Wi axestu of craf tes mine ? 
Betere is min on than alle thine. 
And iyst, ich telle the ware-vore 
VVostu to than man war ibore ? 
To thare blisse of hovene-riche. 



Thar ever is song and murthe iliche. 
Vor the man singeth in holi chirche 
And clerkes ginnath songes wriche 
He riseth up to midel nighte 
And singeth of the hovene lighte 
And prostes upe londe singeth 
Wane the liht of daie springeth 
And ich hom helpe wot I mai 
Ich singe mid hem niht and dai. 



1230. 



Lenten is come with love to toune, 
With tlossmen and with briddes 
roune, 

That all this blisse bringeth, 
Dayeseyes in this dales, 
Notes swete of nightingales, 

Vch fowl song singeth. 



The throstle coc him threteth 00 
Awaye is huere winter wo 

When wode rove springeth. 
This foules singeth ferly fele 
And whyleth on huere winter wele 

That all the wode singeth. 



We are now at the threshold of Chaucer's time ; and 
we may fairly sum up the changes, the gain and the loss 
in the development of our tongue. We have seen that 
the English is the Saxon in its substance, with only such 
modifications as came from its new growth. The words 
that form the body of our speech, those which describe 



28 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

nature, household life, thought, feeling, and deed, are the 
same. Our chief elements of word-building are Saxon. 
The genitive and plural of nouns, the comparative and 
superlative of adjectives, the irregular forms of these, the 
inflection of pronouns, the second and third persons 
present and imperfect of the verb ; the preterites and par- 
ticiples, regular and irregular ; the auxiliaries, the irregu- 
lar verbs ; the ending of adverbs, ly ; the articles and defini- 
tives, a, an, the, that, these, those, many, few, one, none : 
the prepositions and conjunctions, — all these are the old 
Saxon. We have no doubt lost some of its traits that 
we may deeply mourn. Many of the old words are gone 
forever. But by an interesting survival many of the 
archaic words are not wholly lost, but are coming back to 
us. Since the time of Coleridge it has been the ten- 
dency to restore them, and we are indebted to our best 
writers for the recovery of many of these treasures. 

French authors are making systematic efforts for the 
rehabilitation of their old words. While gladly acknowl- 
edging that our English has gained on the whole many 
elements of grace and strength by the fusion, we must 
bear in mind that the best writers of each time are those 
who have most of Saxon ; nor can we wholly accept Cam- 
den's judgment, much as one may enjoy it. 

" Whereas our tongue is mixed, it is no disgrace. The 
Italian is pleasant, but without sinewcs, as a still floating 
water. The French delicate, but ever nice as a woman, 
scarce daring to open her lippes, for fear of marring her 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 29 

countenance. The Spanish majesticall, but fulsome, 
running too much on the O, and terrible like the Divell 
in a play. The Dutch manlike, but withal very harsh, as 
one ready at every word to pick a quarrel. Now we, in 
borrowing, give the strength of consonant to the Italian, 
the full sound of words to the French, the variety of ter- 
minations to the Spanish, and the mollifying of more 
vowels to the Dutch ; and so, like bees, we gather the 
honey of their good properties, and leave the dregs to 
themselves. And thus where substantialnesse can unite 
with delightfulnesse, fulnesse with finenesse, seamlinesse 
with portlinesse, how can the language which consisteth 
of these sound other than full of all sweetnesse." — Cam- 
den s Remains, ed., 1623. 

Let us now ask, What was the general tendency of 
learning in this Anglo-Norman time ? It was in two 
main directions that the mind of the Middle Age was 
turned. One was the theology of the Church ; the other, 
the romance that sprang out of feudal chivalry. Each 
of these had its influence in England. After the first 
fifty years of mental stagnation, following the Conquest, 
we see a fresh life beginning with Henry the Beauclerc. 
In the twelfth century were built the schools of Oxford. 
The Church created some strong thinkers and famous 
scholars ; it was the time of the scholastic philosophy. 
In the latter half of the twelfth century England had 
the high honor of being the home of Anselm. Both he 
and Lanfranc were Lombards, but their life was spent 



30 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

in England. In the next age, when the rationalistic 
school of Abelard came into deadly conflict with the 
realism of the Church, England was the birthplace of two 
of the most famous of those Church gladiators, Alexander 
de Hales, and Duns Scotus. It is proof enough that 
there was no lack of intellect and strength. But greater 
than all was a true herald of the age of science, to be in a 
few centuries established by his namesake. Roger Bacon 
was a wonder indeed in this thirteenth century. It is 
impossible to read his remains to-day without acknowl- 
edging that he was already master of the principia of the 
inductive philosophy. His practical sense, his earnest- 
ness in natural study, his early discoveries are the first 
fruits of the English growth. These names are illustra- 
tive of the national culture. Let us glance, in passing, at 
the monkish historians, — William of Malmesbury, Mat- 
thew Paris, and dear old Geoffrey of Monmouth, the 
wonderful Munchausen who in his Latin pages embalmed 
all the legends, and fed half the romances. His history 
leads us at once, and by the most pleasant of cross-roads, 
to the other branch of Anglo-Norman literature. In 
sooth there was no history then. All was romance. His- 
tory was not born ; yet before speaking of the romance, 
we should not forget one branch of the Anglo-Norman 
literature, of special value for the living portraiture of 
this fermenting time. It was a time when the monks 
were writing Latin poetry, and, in utter recklessness of 
classic rules, introducing rhyme and accent. The mediae- 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 3 1 

vai poems were the cradle of some of the most curious 
and varied song-measures of modern time. 

Among these Latin rhymers there were in England, at 
the end of the twelfth century, several who claim our 
notice. We care nothing now for the dull classic poem 
of " Joseph of Exeter," or " The 3d Crusade," the " Antio- 
chus." But the " Mirror of Fools," by Nigel Wircker, 
and the " Golias " poems of Walter Mapes are indeed 
signs of the times. We have in them the very prelude 
of the Reformation. These works are the most biting 
satirists of the Church from pope to friar. 

In the " Mirror of Fools " an ass goes through the 
scholastic course, takes his degree as a finished scholar, 
and then, after reaching the end of Church learning, re- 
turns gladly to his old asinine form. 

But even this is outdone by the humor of Mapes. It 
is marvellous with what a lash he flogs the Church ; and 
his mastery of the Latin rhymes is a remarkable feat. 

Est Leo pontifex summus, qui devorat ; 
Qui libras sitiens libros impignorat ; 
Marcam respiciens, Marcum dedecorat ; 
In summis navigans, in nummis anchorat. 

Est aquila, quae sic alis innititur ; 
Archidiaconus, qui praedo dicitur ; 
Qui videt a longe prsedam quam sequitur 
Et cum circumvolat ex rapto vivitur. 

Omnis a clericis fluit enormitas ! 
Cum Deo debeant mentes sollicitas, 
Tractant negotia mercesque vetitas. 
Et rerum turpium vices indebitas. 



32 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Dialogus inter Corpus et Animatn. 

Ego quae tam nobilis fueram creata, 
Ad similitudinem Domini formata, 
Et ab omni crimine baptismo mundata, 
Iterum criminibus sic cum denigrata 
Per te, caro misera, sumque reprobata, 
Vere possum dicere, heu, quod fui nata ! 
Utinam ex utero fuissam translata 
Protinus ad tumulum ! et sic liberata 
A poena tartarea mihi jam parata. 

Let us turn now to the romances ; there are the mind, 
the manners, the fantastic life of the Middle Age. The 
feudal period has reached its bloom. The crusades were 
the awakening of all Europe ; and for the first time it had 
drunk deep of the knowledge of the wonderland of the 
East. It was intoxication, — this incoming flood of wild 
legend, of Arabian and Moorish fancies, of strange stories 
of Greece and Rome, giant and Paynim and enchanter, 
— the most grotesque medley in the world. It was out of 
the whirlpool of history and fable that the literature of 
the time was shaped. 

We have many collections of the tales of that time. 
There is the " Gesta Romanorum," a pile of stories of 
Greece and Rome, where Alexander the Great appears 
with Aristotle, and Virgil is a great magician, mixed 
with parables and such legends as furnished the " Pericles 
of Tyre " and the " Merchant of Venice.'' 

There were some Indian stories, as the " Seven Wise 
Masters " ; and stories from the south of Europe. 

Normandy was one of the chief places where these 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 33 

were gathered and put into charming fabliaux, like the 
" Lais " of Marie of France. 

But it is in the form of metrical romance that they first 
appeared. There are four great epic cycles into which 
the mass may be divided. 

1st. The Norse, drawn originally from the Edda, and 
coming down through the " Nibelungen Lied " into a 
Christian and continental form. 

2d. The Carlovingian, of Frank descent, whence come 
the legends of Roland and Charlemagne. 

3d. The Spanish, whose centre is the Cid, and which 
is richest in Moorish story. 

4th. The Round Table epic, of British growth, and 
shaped in Armorica. 

There can be little doubt that the history of the growth 
of these epics is what has been claimed. The stories 
grew out of the early legend, were then taken up by the 
minstrels, and turned into song for the baronial hall and 
cottage. 

Ministrelsy was the " gaye science." They received 
and enlarged these legends, and so after a time the whole 
was rounded into epic form. At first they were not com- 
mitted to writing, but were learned by heart and repeated ; 
at last they were converted on one hand into the popu- 
lar ballad, and on the other were written down in big 
quartos by the prose romancer. 

Such was the metrical romance of the feudal time, and 
we can now learn somewhat of its English history. 



34 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

We have first the Round Table poem, of British birth : 
the scene is laid in the Cornwall which the Welsh kept so 
long. 

Its kinship to the soil made it dear to England. 
Spenser breathes much of its romance into the " Faerie 
Queene." Tennyson has made the phantoms of the 
Round Table live again. Even as we have it, in the 
book of Sir Thomas Malory, 1432-1476, it has a rare and 
rich charm. It is perhaps the finest picture of chivalry : 
its devout faith, its strange superstition, its loose morals, 
and yet its grand ideal of heroism. Next to this come 
the English romances. 

Two of the oldest, the " Littell Geste of King Horn " 
and the "Lay of Havelok the Dane," come from the 
North. In the latter the spirit and descriptions of the 
poem are still marked as old English work. "Havelok, 
the orphan child of a Danish king, is by his faithless 
guardian given to a fisherman named Grim, to be 
drowned. Grim saves the child, and flies with him to 
England, where he lands on the coast of Lincolnshire, 
and founds the town of Grimsby. An English princess 
is forced, by a guardian as false as that of Havelok's, 
to marry the fisherman's foster-child, whose royal de- 
scent is then revealed, and he wins back his father's king- 
dom." 

The plot is simple, but the poem is full of interest as 
a faithful picture of the manners and customs of the 
time, as in the knighting of Havelok. 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 35 

Hwan he hauede manrede and oth, 

Taken of lef and of loth, 

Ubbe dubbede him to knith, 

With a swerd so swithe brith, 

And the folk of all the lond, 

Bitauhte him al in his hond, 

The cunnriche everil del, 

And made him king heylike and wel. 

Hwan he was king, ther mouthe men se, 

The moste ioie that mouhte be. 

Buttinge with sharpe speres, 

Skirming with taleuaces, that men beres, 

"Wrastiing with laddes, putting of ston, 

Harping and piping, ful god won 

Leyk of mine, of hasard ok, 

Romanz reding on the bok ; 

Ther mouthe men here the gestes singe, 

The gleymen on the tabour dinge ; 

Ther mouthe men se the boles beyte, 

And the bores, with hundes teyte, 

Was neuere ioie more 

In al this werd, than tho was thore. 

Many of the romances are of French origin and are 
steeped in the colors of French romantic poetry, with its 
magic wonders, its manners and feasts and battles of 
chivalry. Of these is the Greek romance of " King 
Alisaunder " ; the romances of " Florice and Blanche- 
fleur," " Roland and Ferragus," " Sir Eglamour," "Amys 
and Amiloun." 

Sir Isumbras. 

The Sowdane sawe that lady thare, 
Hym thoghte als scho an angelle ware, 

That ware commene owte of hevene. 
He saide : " Wille thou selle thi wyffe to me ? 
And I will gyff the golde and fee 



36 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



Zaa more than thou kane nevene. 
I salle the gyffe tene thowsand pownde 
Of florence that bene rede and rownde 

And gud robes sevene. 
And scho salle be lady of alle my lande, 
And alle salle bowe hir to fote and hande 

And noghte withstande hir stevene." 
Sir Ysambrace sayd thane schortly : " Naye, 
My wyfe wille I nott selle awaye, 

Bot mene me for hir slaa; 
I wedded hir in Goddes laye, 
To halde hir to myne endyng daye, 

Zaa bothe in wele and waa." 
The gold thane on his mantille thay talde, 
And tille hyme-selfene thay gane it falde, 

His wyefe thay tuke hym fraa ; 
And appone the lande thay him kaste, 
And bett hym till his rybbis braste, 

And made his flesche fulle blaa ! 



Sir Degrevant. 



Lord Gode in Trynite, 
Yeff home hevene ffor to se 
That lovethe gamene and gle 
And gestys to ffede. 

Ther ffolke sitis in ffere, 
Shulde mene herkene and here 
Of gode that beffore hem were 
That levede on arthede. 

And y schalle karpe off a knyght, 
That was both hardy and wygth, 
Sire Degrevaunt that hend hygth, 
That dowgthy was of dede. 

Was nevere kyngh that he ffond, 
In ffraunce ne in Englond 
Mygth sette a schafft of hys hond 

One a stythe stede ! 
***** 



Thrytty wyntur and mare 
Thei lyvede to-gydur without care, 
And sevene chyldur she hym bare. 
That worthy in wede ; 

And sene sche dyed, y undurstond, 
He seysed hys eyre with hys hond, 
And went into the Holy Lond, 
Hevene be hys mede ! 

At Port-gaff was he slone, 
Ffor-justyd with a Soudone ; 
Thus to Gode is he gone 
Thus-doughty in dede. 

Lord Gode in Trinite, 
Gyff hem Heven for to see, 
That loves gamene and gle 
And gestes to fede ! 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN TIME (1066-1500). 37 

But the stories dearest to the English heart were those 
of British-born champions. Among them were " Guy of 
Warwick," and " Bevis of Hamptoun "; and, greatest of 
all, " Richard of the Lion Heart," the idol of the people. 
It is wonderful how this knight of history had grown to 
be the mythic hero in that time. 

Bevis of Hamptoun. 

This geaunt was mighty and strong, 

And full thirty feet was long. 

He was bristled like a sow, 

A foot had he between each brow, 

His lips were great, and hung aside, 

His eyen were hollow, his mouth was wide. 

Lothly he was to look on than, 

And liker a devil than a man. 

His staff was a young oak, 

Hard and heavy was his stroke. 

Sir Bevis wondered as him might, 

And him asked what he hight. 

" My name," he said, " is Ascapard, 

Sir Grassey sent me hitherward." 

Richard Cozur de Lion. 

i 

King Richard spake to an old man .* 

" Wendes home to your Soudan. 

Say him it shall nought avail, 

That he forbars us our vitayle. 

Bread, wine, fish, flesh, salmon, and conger* 

Of us none shall die of hunger, 

While we may wenden to fight, 

And slay the Saracens downright, 

King Richard shall warrant 

There is no flesh so nourrissant 

Unto an English man, 

Partridge, plover, heron ne swan, 



38 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. ' 

Cow ne ox, sheep ne swine, 
As the head of a Saracen. 
There is he fat and thereto tender, 
And my men be lean and slender." 

Richard fights with the Soudan, eats Saracens' head, is put in a 
cage in Austria, and kills the lion. 

King Richard, I understand, 

Or he went out of Engeland, 

Let him make an ax for the nones, 

To break therewith the Sarazyns' bones. > 

The hede was wrought right wele, 

Therein was twenty pound of stele, 

All that he hit he all to-frapped, 

The griphons away fast rapped ; 

And the prisoun, where he came to 

With his ax he smote right thro' 1 

In this slight sketch I trust we have seen somewhat of 
the character of the whole age as it is mirrored in its 
literature. It is the age of new formation ; all the mental 
and moral features of England, the old Saxon strength, 
the Norman chivalry, the learning of the Church, and 
with it the first whispers of reformation, the feudal pride 
and with it the glimpses of national freedom — all are here. 
In another century this bold satire of the monk will be 
heard from the pulpit of Wyclif. This Saxon freedom 
will wrest England from the feudal grasp. This romance 
will bloom in the poetry of Chaucer, and the old home- 
speech, the home-born manhood, enlarged and enriched 
by three hundred years of growth, will come forth in a 
ripe national life. 



CHAPTER III. 

EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 

It may seem to many an unworthy beginning of an 
English literature which boasts its Milton and Shakes- 
peare to go back to the early rhymers of the ballad day. 
When Dr. Johnson wrote the " Lives of English Poets," 
he thought it enough to herald the bright succession with 
Cowley and Donne. But a change has come over the 
spirit of criticism. It is a fact worth noting, that with 
the awakening in the day of Cowper and Burns of a more 
home-born poetry there revived also the love of old Eng- 
lish ; men dared to speak of the golden age of Elizabeth ; 
the critics opened anew the rich rhymes of Spenser, Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, Herbert and Jeremy Taylor ; soon 
they would fain push back to Dan Chaucer, and the 
forgotten fathers. To-day the love of old English is re- 
newed ; and if we will call back a little of our child-like 
spirit, the older ballads, the fanciful romaunts of chivalry, 
and the " Round Table," will be as fresh for us as the 
recovered mosaics of Pompeii. 

It is no worthless task that we undertake in this study; 
in the ballad literature of old England, as of other na- 
tions, we recognize the mother-speech, the fruitful germ 
ol all that has been written. 

39 



40 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

We must understand in its full meaning the truth that 
the literature of all lands begins with poetry. This prin- 
ciple lies at the root of our studies in history and literary 
criticism. There is in the life of every people an age of 
spontaneous, fresh intellect, when first the national charac- 
ter develops into speech, but has not attained the ripeness 
of reflective thought. It has not yet any philosophic sci- 
ence, any well-ascertained historic annals, any refined prose, 
any criticism. Prose is the result of long culture. But 
poetry is the first natural utterance of a people. It is the 
child not of art, but of nature. Thus primitive history- 
is always poetry ; it exists in the shape of wild legend, of 
warlike and social tradition ; and its scattered material is 
afterward collected by the more accurate annalist. Thus 
again, the truths of religion always begin with mythology, 
and the bard is at once the prophet and the minstrel. 
The valuable discoveries of rude science, the hints of 
philosophy and morals are expressed in verse. Every 
age, every nation has thus its poetry. The rhymer of 
later days may be a solitary dilettante ; the rhymer of 
the first ages must be the representative of his people. 
The whole world would speak, but cannot, " being of slow 
speech and a slow tongue " ; and the poet is as Aaron the 
Levite to Moses, " thy spokesman unto the people, and 
he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou to him 
instead of a God." But as the world grows older it 
passes from this state of spontaneous life to that of indi- 
vidual reflection ; prose and poetry are severed. Poetry 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 4 1 

becomes an art, " which was before a rage." The poet is 
driven out from the real world into an ideal one of his 
own making. The historian becomes, or seeks to become, 
a chronicler of facts. The philosopher banishes, as Plato 
did from his Republic, the mythological fancies of the first 
age. The moralist and the man of letters speak no 
longer, but write in well-compacted essays for a reading 
public. Primitive literature is all blended in one color- 
ing; that of later days is grouped in severed masses, with 
many varieties of light and shade. The one is a single 
beam of white light, the other has the bands and the di- 
vided lines of the spectrum. 

The fact of this necessary transition from the age of 
unconscious, spontaneous life to that of reflective 
thought, and of this poetic character of the early litera- 
ture among all peoples, is one of the utmost moment to 
us in our study. In proportion as we have clearly 
grasped this principle, we shall see the significance of 
ballad literature. In it we may read the fresh and life- 
like record of the past, of religion, law, philosophy, war 
and peace, science and social manners. We are not idle 
loiterers in a garden of beauty; there is a deeper meaning 
lurking amidst these flowers of poesy. 

"That song I heard was of a higher mood." Poetry 
is no lifeless thing ; it is more than a jingling of words, 
a nice skill of metre and rhythm. " Many content them- 
selves with admiring its delicate branches, its leaves, and 
blossoms, not heeding that this fair array is put forth 



42 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

through roots, which run down deep into the soil of our 
humanity, and are watered by its nether springs. That 
state of society least congenial with poetry, is most un- 
favorable to human nature itself." Thus it is in Homer 
we read, not Homer merely, but the Greek mind. We 
need not to settle the long brawl as to the identity of 
Homer the man ; we have there the storehouse of that 
ancient and beautiful world, and so do we open the 
scroll of old English poetry. It came from the heart 
of the people ; it shaped and moulded the rough-hewn 
mass of the English mind. English literature, from the 
ballads of war and love, the rhymed histories, the ro- 
maunts of chivalry, down to the biting satire of Chaucer 
and Piers Plowman, and to the mysteries and moralities 
is an unbroken chain of history. 

English history is dead and dry to the reader of the 
" standard " works. How painfully and in what forced 
marches we haste across the early periods, over the 
Heptarchy, and the wars of Briton, Saxon, and Dane! 
How gladly we snatch at the story of Arthur and his 
Knights of the Round Table ! It is the love of living 
men that makes the romance of history dearer than the 
octavos of classic scholars. One ballad is worth all 
Hume. We had rather, with good Douglas, hear the 
cricket chirp than the mouse squeak. It were a curi- 
ous thing to examine, philosophically, how far Romance 
is a better guide to historic truth than History itself, 
Aristotle's well-known aphorism reveals the reason of 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 43 

this: "that the superiority of poetry over history con- 
sists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher serious- 
ness." The ideal truth is always nearer than the dry 
chronicle. 

Such is old English history. It lives in tradition and 
song more than in rolls of parchment ; in the voices of un- 
lettered bards more than in folios of clerkly lore, than in an- 
nals of parliaments and commerce ; in the huts of peas- 
ants, in old baronial castles, in moss-grown, haunted 
towers ; in the lowly burial-ground amidst half decayed 
monuments, in the wizard's cavern overhung with night- 
shade, in the green-wood of Robin Hood, on the hill-top 
amidst piping shepherds, in moonlit glens with Oberon 
and Puck and the dancing elves, in the hall of wassail, 
in knightly tournaments and rustic sport, in crowded 
highways, in holydays and feast days of Yule and Martin- 
mas, at wedding, christening, and funeral ; in fair and 
market, in kirk and theatre and hostelrie, in the lofty 
buskin of tragedy and the laughing step of comedy, in 
mass-book and song-book, among lords and ladies, 
squires, pages, serfs, thieves, and honest men ; under the 
helmet of the soldier, under the hood of the monk, under 
the cap and bells of the jester, the palmer's scrip, and 
the beggar's gown ; it resounds from the harp and merry 
pipe, the shrill tempest of war, and the chant of the 
cathedral. It is the living voice of living men, coming 
up from all corners and by-ways of their thought and 
feeling, their action and suffering. 



44 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 

But as we thus recognize in early poetry the proper ex- 
pression of a primitive age, so in poetry itself we must 
distinguish the same process of change. Every age has 
its own poetry. There could not be a Homer in the day 
of Sophocles, or a Shakespeare in the age of Chaucer. 
The poetic element is always the same, but its manner is 
fashioned by time and place. The earliest poetry must 
be the ballad. It is the natural utterance of an age 
where there is as yet no art of words ; where the poet is 
no literary man, no student of the aesthetic laws of beauty, 
the harmonies and sweet mysteries of language ; where 
he does not write for the magazines, or print in i2mos, 
but sings at the court of the great and in the cottage. 
But when the age of reflective thought has come, when 
literary culture is a fixed fact, then we have the begin- 
nings of an art in poetry ; we have a Chaucer and a 
Wyatt, then a Spenser, a Milton, and at last a Words- 
worth, a Shelley. As the philosophy of the first age 
was poetic ; so the poetry of the later age is becoming 
more and more philosophical. The various divisions of 
the poetic art are each the outgrowth of this social cult- 
ure. Epic, lyric, pastoral, didactic, dramatic poetry are 
gradually distinguished. Epic poetry, in the sense which 
we commonly give to it, is the artificial structure of an 
after-day. Virgil, Tasso, Milton, are poets of a highly 
cultivated time. They live after the heroic age has gone ; 
their poems are constructed by plan, have a unity, not 
of ideas only, but of parts, and the proportions of archi- 
tecture. 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 45 

But Homer is not an epic poet in this sense ; he lived 
nearer to the rude time of heroic Greece ; he has no art 
by the Aristotelian canon ; unity of idea, certainly of 
legend, but no more. He is a ballad-singer, the most 
glorious of them all ; and the " Iliad " is to be classed with 
the " Cid," with the " Nibelungen-Lied," and with the 
metrical romances of England. This is the true, original 
epos, only to be found in the heroic age. If we compare 
Homer and Virgil, we see at once that the one speaks 
the living poetry of his people and time, the other com- 
pacts a beautiful historic work, to be read by Roman 
wits, not sung at the head of armies and at the festal 
board. Thus Spenser gives us an elaborate picture of 
the days of chivalry and romance ; but his great poem is 
a long allegory ; already the reality of that age is gone ; 
and his knights and ladies are only spectral images that 
"point a moral," not flesh and blood, as they came forth 
in the quaint old verses of Arthur or Charlemagne. All 
true poetry is the birth of its age, and epic poetry can 
only be the utterance of an epic time. But the proper 
poetry of an after-day is the lyric, the expression of per- 
sonal, individual feeling; the pastoral, which describes 
nature, and makes it an object of meditative study; the 
didactic, which has to do with refined social life, as satire, 
or moral sentiment ; and most of all, the dramatic. The 
dramatic is the proper expression of social life, with its 
varied, complex relations, from the gravest to the light- 
est ; like painting, it presents in its masses of light and 



46 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

shade the infinite forces of the world. Philosophy, re- 
ligion, polity, social life, individual thought and action, 
were all expressed in Shakespeare. Every literature has 
thus begun with the ballad. Greece had in Homer the 
greatest singer of them all. Doubtless the Roman had 
his ballad literature, the legendary lore, from which Livy 
drew the material of his history (as an early monk of 
Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Monmouth from the old 
romance). The literature of Southern Europe began 
with the romance and lyric verses of the Trouvere and 
the Troubadour ; and Ariosto, like our Spenser, is the 
later singer, who marks the transition from the bard 
to the artist. The scald of Scandinavia, the gleeman of 
Saxony, the minstrel of later days was, like Homer, a 
wandering singer. His poetry was unwritten, until some 
Pisistratus of after-days gathered it into books. He sang 
as Goethe's minstrel: " Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt." 
But before examining the ballad poetry now left us, we 
must glance briefly at that English age and its most im- 
portant landmarks. It is a broad field, this of unwritten 
poetry. Its true introduction is in the study of the Met- 
rical Romance which came with the influence of Nor- 
man chivalry. Our ballad poetry is to be looked on as 
the proper child of the Romance. Those marvellous and 
long-winded legends of Sir Launcelot and Gawain, which 
formed the entertainment of the court, passed among the 
people, and were broken into shorter fragments of song. 
It has been the theory of some that instead of the ballad 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 47 

coming from the Romance, the Romance is itself de- 
rived from the old heroic ballad. After all there need be 
no dispute, for the two theories are not contradictory. 
From the time of the Anglo-Saxon to the decline of the 
Norman era, there were many suchballads. The min- 
strel and the gleeman at first could not probably retain 
the whole of the interminable romance narratives ; and 
shorter narratives in ballad form were the result. Of 
these early ballads in that form there are few left us. 
When minstrelsy became an order like the Homeridse, 
these fragmentary songs were recombined into the ro- 
mance. Again, when the romance died out, its remains 
passed anew into later ballads, and became the property 
of the common people. We may then call the whole 
period to Chaucer that of ballad literature. By degrees 
there arose a more classic day ; and the minstrel sank from 
the joculator regis, the professional singer to the buffoon, 
and the wandering piper, " who gave a fitt of mirth for a 
groat," to the crowd in country taverns ; and at last, num- 
bered among " rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars," 
at the close of Elizabeth's reign, he passed away. The 
singer was succeeded by the later ballad writer, and the 
heroic song was mingled on the printed " broad-side " 
with the host of " Sweet Williams," and " George Barn- 
wells," with madrigals and ditties, and published in Gar- 
lands and like popular collections. We thus possess them 
now, and they yet " stir the heart as with the sound of 
the trumpet." But "what must be our delight compared 



4$ ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

with that real age of ancient minstrelsy, when king, 
knight, lady at the festal board listened to the heroic 
song, as it swelled from the voice*of a renowned singer, 
echoed by the harps of those glorious gleemen ! " 

The English ballad is distinctly expressive of the na- 
tional character. German poetry has more of the weird 
and mysterious view of nature, the charm which has been 
caught by Uhland and Fouque. The French is more the 
song of country and sentiment. The Spanish is loftier, 
and seldom doffs -its armor. But the English is natural 
and homeborn ; full of household love and pastoral life, of 
fun and frolic, as well as of the " higher mood.'* 

We may divide the Ballad poetry yet left us into four 
distinct classes: I. The heroic ballad of chivalry, such as 
the " Boy and Mantle," "Syr Cauline," " Child of Elle ; 
and with them " Robin Hood." 2. The ballads of the 
border life, including " Chevy Chase," and the larger pro- 
portion of Sir W. Scott's minstrelsy. This is a most 
prolific source. It has been shewn that the ballads lin- 
gered longer across the Tweed than south of it. Its 
cause doubtless was, that the prosaic process of a modern 
civilization had not been felt there, and the songs still 
lived with the old manners. 3. The popular and didactic 
household ballad. 4. The later published ballad. Of 
these last I say nothing. " Edwin and Emma," " Poor 
Bessy," and all the sentimental effusions of higher or 
lower bards are poor attempts to renew the childhood of 
the past. 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 49 

It is time here to say a word of the ballad rhyme. It 
would be impossible to give a full criticism of it ; a few 
specimens must suffice. The Anglo-Saxon verse gener- 
ally had four accents with alliteration, — sometimes five 
and six accents. Guest supposes that the early rhymed 
couplets of our English verse were derived from these. 
Rhyme, however, doubtless came from the French. The 
common form of rhythm was the eight syllable couplet, 
with four accents. 

At the bridge end stood a town 
Painted with gold and with azure. 

Another form is the alternate verse. 

Richard raught him with a bar of brass, 
That he caught at the gate. 

The common form of our heroic ballad has four 
accents. 

Now Christ thee save, thou proud porter, 
Now Christ thee save and see. 

But the common measure is often varied by the triple, 
in which two unaccented syllables separate the accents, 

And Scarlette he was flyinge a foote 
Faste over stocke and stone. 

As to the rhythm of the later ballad it is impossible to 
name more than the few more common forms. Every 
variety of mixed rhyme is found there. The favorite 
ones are perhaps the tail rhyme as in *' Gammer Gurton," 



50 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

or "The Nut Browne Maid," or in the Psalmetre of Arch- 
bishop Parker: 

To fede my nede he will me lede 

To pastures greene and fat ; 
He forth brought me in libertee 

To waters delicate. 

Others are the " Burthen," the return of the same words 
at the close of each stave ; and the " Wheel " a return of 
some peculiar rhythm; the "Bob-wheel" is a short, 
abrupt form of this. The " Roundelay" and " Virelay " 
are other forms of the " Burthen " ; the first the repeti- 
tion of the opening couplet at the close of the stanza. 
Besides these there are all sorts of broken staves. 

I cannot eat but little meat 

My stomach is not good, 

But sure I think that I can drink 

With him that wears a hood, 

Though I go bare, take you no care 

I nothing am a colde, 

I stuffte my skin so full within, 

With jolly good ale and olde. 

Chorus. 

Backe and side go bare, go bare, 

Both foot and hande go colde, 

But belly, God send thee good ale ynoughe 

Whether it be new or olde. 

But we must pass on to the point of most interest to 
us, the poetic criticism of the ballad. We shall not, of 
course, attempt to place the rude singers of an unformed 
age beside the masters of art. And yet we may freely 
say that there are certain features of that early poetry, 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 5 I 

which to any true scholar must always have their pecu- 
liar charm. The best proof of this is found in the fre- 
quent examples of its imitators. Burns, Campbell, Scott, 
and yet more, Goethe and Schiller, have written nothing 
that so speaks to the heart as their simple ballads. The 
world loves to return to its childhood. Yet it is simply 
impossible for our later poets to be true, children. Com- 
pare any modern ballad with the original, and we see 
the hand of the artist. The flowers are not of nature's 
making, but of painted tissue paper. The ballad litera- 
ture of the first age is in this respect inimitable. It is to 
the poetry of art as the carol of the lark to an opera. If 
we approach them with the canon of Aristotle in one 
hand, with our taste formed by aesthetic models, we can- 
not enjoy them. Goethe says that the innermost law of 
art is that we know the work of the artist from his own 
standpoint. Only then may we read the meaning of 
St. Peters, and Stonehenge. We must rid ourselves of 
time and place, and be Englishmen of the days of 
Richard and Robin Hood. The faults of the ballad, of 
course, are rudeness of thought and expression. Their 
charm is simple truth to nature. If with such a view we 
read them, we shall find their childlike beauty. We have 
space but for a passing glimpse of their features, seizing 
here and there a gem : as in the fine opening of " Robin 
Hood:" 

When shaws been sheene and shraddes full fayne, 
And leaves beth large and long, 



5 2 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

'T is merrye walking in the fayre forest 
To hear the small bride's song. 

The woodweele sang, and would not cease 

Sitting upon the spraye, 
Soe lcude, he wakened Robin Hood 

In Grenewood where he lay." 

The Gay Gosshawk. 

The red, that 's in my true love's cheek, 
Is like blood-drops on the snaw ; 
The white, that is on her breast bare, 
Like the down o' the white sea-maw. 

And even at my love's bouer-door 
There grows a flowering birk ; 
And ye maun sit, and sing thereon, 
As she gangs to the kirk. 

Johnie of Breadislee. 

There 's no bird in a' this forest 

Will do as mickle for me, 
As dip its wing in the wan water, 

And sh-aik it on my e'e bree. 

O is there nae a bonny bird, 

Can sing as I can say ? — 
Could flee to my mother's bower 

And tell to fetch Johnie away?" 

The starling flew to his mother's window stane, 

It whistled and it sang ; 
And aye the ower word o' the tune 

Was — " Johnie tarries lang \ " 

Bothwick of North Berwick Law, 
Wons in his Seaward Tower, — 

Which looketh on to the German Sea, 
A wild and lanely Bower. 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 53 

The sea mew and the shrieking gull, 

May sing him to his sleep, 
For the wash o' the wave comes oure the top 

Of Eothwick's auncient keep. 

The Damon Lover. 

" O hold your tongue of your weeping, says he, 
" Of your weeping now let me be ; j 

I will shew you how the lilies grow 
On the banks of Italy." — 

M O what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills, 

That the sun shines sweetly on ?" 
" O yon are the hills of heaven," he said, 
" Where you will never win." — 

" O whaten mountain is yon," she said 
" All so dreary wi' frost and snow ? " 
" O yon is the mountain of hell," he cried, 
Where you and I will go." 

And aye she turned her round about, 

Aye taller he seemed to be ; 
Until that the tops o' that gallant ship 

Nae taller were than he. 

The clouds grew dark, and the wind grew loud, 

And the levin filled her ee ; 
And waesome wailed the snaw-white sprites 

Upon the gurlie sea. 

He strack the top-mast wi' his hand, 

The foremast wi' his knee ; 
And he brake that gallant ship in twain, 

And sank her in the sea. 

The Broom o' the Cowden-Knowes. 

O the broom, and the bonny bonny broom, 
And the broom of the Cowden-Knowes ! 
And aye sae sweet as the lassie sang, 
I' the bought milking the ewes. 



54 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 

The hills were high on ilka side, 
An' the bought i' the lirk o' the hill 

And aye, as she sang her voice it rang. 
Out o'er the head o' yon hill. 



There is here no elaborate description of nature ; no 
over niceness of touch, nor any artificial, vague idealizing, 
but honest simplicity. There is the charm of natural de- 
scription in the ballad. It has been often asked whether 
the ancients had any appreciation of nature. The poetry 
of the pastoral, of description, of sentimental landscape 
painting is the product of a later day. It belongs to a 
time, when society has grown old, and man is no longer 
the chief object of interest ; then the poet retires to soli- 
tude ; he idealizes the forms of nature, he admires with a 
passionate morbid feeling a world untouched by the sins 
of society ; he raves, apostrophises, and adores. But in 
the first age nature is but the background of poetry; man 
the prominent object. There is no minute science of tree 
and leaf and rock. There is no passionate soliloquizing 
of a Byron, nor sentimental idealizing of a Wordsworth. 
But there is natural and healthy sight, and love of out- 
ward beauty. The groves are groves, not haunts of the 
muses ; the skies are skies, not rose color ; tempest and 
sunshine, oak and flower, are genuine. 

And so, again, in the deeper realities of human feeling, 
of life, there is the same reality. The modern poet has 
learned to philosophize about the passions ; he gives you 
the anatomy of the human heart ; he describes every 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 55 

agony of love, every nicest shade of emotion from the 
chemical analysis of a sigh to the last stage of senti- 
mental insanity. Each namby-pamby song is a piece of 
metaphysics done into rhyme. This is not nature. It 
may please us in some subtle forms, as a fine specimen 
of morbid anatomy, or as a well polished conceit, but it 
is not nature. There is no such method in the true mad- 
ness. The lover does not hold a watch to count the 
beats of his pulse, or turn a Harvey to make discoveries 
about the circulation of his blood. The characteristic of 
the modern lyrist is subjectivity, of the older and truer 
objectivity ; he simply felt, and spoke as he felt. Thus 
a modern poet would describe to you all the emotions 
from surprise to sadness, that passed through Sir Patrick's 
mind, the ballad singer gives you Sir Patrick himself : 

The first word that Sir Patrick read, 
Sae loud, loud laughed he ; 
The neist word that Sir Patrick read, 
The tear blinded his e'e. 

A Moore will give us through the voice of some forlorn 
fair one the most musical, most melancholy autobiogra- 
phy of all the moods she has gone through, from the first 
tremulous whisper of the heart to the last accurately meas- 
ured crescendo and diminuendo of despair. But the 
ballad tells it in a simple picture or a natural image. 

O waly, waly up the bank, 
And waly, waly doun the brae, 
And waly, waly yon burn-side, 
Where I and my love were wont to gae 



56 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

I leaned my back unto an aik, 

I thocht it was a trustie tree ; 
But first it bow'd, and syne it brak, 

Sae my true love did lichtly me. 

4 '0 hold your hand, Lord William ! " she said, 

" For your strokes are wondrous sair ; 
True lovers I can get many a ane, 

But a father I can never get mair." 

I send him the rings from my white fingers. 

The garlands off my hair ; 
I send him the heart that 's in my breast ; 

What would my love have mair ? 

Edom O' Gordon, 

bonnie, bonnie was her mouth. 
And cherry were her cheeks, 

And clear, clear was her yellow hair, 
Whereon the red bluid dreeps ; 

Then wi' his spear he turned her owre, 

gin her face was wan ! . 

He sayd, ' ' Ye are the first that e'er 

1 wisht alive again." 

He "turned her owre and owre againe, 

O gin her skin was whyte ! 
" I might have spared that bonnie face 

To have been sum man's delight. 

" Busk and boun, my merry men a' 
For ill dooms I doe gesse ; — 

1 cannot luik on that bonnie face 
As it lies on the grass." 

Such poetry abounds in the happy touches of nature ; 
not the curiosa felicitas of art. There is hardly a simple 



EARLY BALLAD POETRY. 57 

feeling of the heart, of maternal tenderness, of joy and 
sadness, of penitence and remorse, but is found in these 
ballads. But they are touches ; the master's single stroke 
of the brush ; not a labored finish of every daisy and 
every rose petal. 

It is true that in this ballad poety its very beauty is 
linked with a certain defect. There could not be that 
variety of thought, of weird feeling and life so character- 
istic of modern days ; as the serf's music cannot give you 
the harmonies of the opera. All ballads are therefore 
within a narrow range of action. Love and war are the 
themes. The maidens go through the same adventures, 
escape behind the knight, are imprisoned or murdered, 
and rise out of their graves at midnight, and weep under 
a thorn. Every cavalier has the same weapons, and risks 
his neck in the same way. But it is still nature ; simple 
and true to its original. 

But after all, it is impossible to gain any adequate idea 
of the subject by such specimen bricks from the building. 
Indeed this is the very character of the old ballad that it 
is a whole. Modern poets spend their artistic labor on 
details, and work up passages for quotation. But here it 
is the totality of impression ; it is action ; it is life in all 
its natural overflowing, onward movement. You cannot 
stay to analyze " fayre Emmeline's " emotions, or to hear 
the imprisoned warrior delight himself with lofty, moral 
soliloquies. It is the fable without the moral — now, as 
formerly, to my childish thought, the best fable ; as when 



58 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

I read of ^Esop's lambs and wolves, and birds, and lions, 
but forgot the conclusion, or rather drew it without its 
being drawn for me. This is nature. This is true art ; 
and the last, homely lesson of criticism of the ballad is 
this, that he who would enjoy it must be a child again. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 

The history of English literature is in no way as at- 
tractive as the study of the men who are the flower of 
its life. The annals of poetry, as we read them in our 
antiquaries, are a heavy mass of bibliography ; but when 
we turn to a Chaucer, a Spenser, or Ben Jonson, it is 
like studying the family pedigree, not in the herald's of- 
fice, but in a marked group of portraits, which give in 
every quaint costume the features of living men. We 
place foremost that name, the daystar of our literature, 
Chaucer, to whom we may better apply the praise Cow- 
ley has written of Virgil : 

The wise, 
"Whose verse walks highest, tho' not flies, 
Who brought green poesy to her ripest age, 
And made that art, which was a rage. 

It was common in the day of past criticism, when 
our elder English was an unknown tongue to many, 
to regard Chaucer as a dull and illegible rhymer; and 
even Byron could say that " his celebrity lay in his an- 
tiquity " ; but now our best writers agree in calling him 
one of the creative minds of the past. In him we have the 
best introduction to the language, in its great transition 

59 



60 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

time, when our English was slowly forming out of its 
motley material. And yet more, in him we have the 
mind of England, as it passed out of the romantic sea- 
son of Norman chivalry to its ripe, national manhood, 
and drew into it all the influences, social and religious, 
which then began to blossom over Europe. It is neces- 
sary for us to epitomize in a few words the changes 
which had passed over the social life of England and 
gone to shape its literature. There had been as yet no 
age of national culture. It was slowly developing from 
the chaos of the Conquest. There must be first an Eng- 
lish people. 

The age of Alfred, of a proper Saxon culture, had 
passed away ; and while the rude speech and the strong 
elements of character remained among the people, these 
had little utterance. The spirit of the Norman court 
gave tone to poetry, learning, and manners; but it 
reached no further. Social liberty lay prostrate under a 
mailed nobility and a despotic church. The land was 
torn by endless wars. No law, no freedom, no national 
education could bloom amidst these evils. But with the 
Edwards we see the coming of a real social growth, a 
middle class rise in London ; its merchants bought their 
rights in Parliament ; its rich guilds held at bay king and 
baron. Crecy taught England that her bows and bills 
were as strong in war as her knights in gilded mail. 
These changes came slowly, yet it could be seen that 
there was to be an English people as well as a court ; a 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 6 1 

home-born speech, thought, life, a home-born Protestant 
faith. It was not, however, a return to the Saxon type ; 
it was to be that rich blending which makes the com- 
posite of modern England, and which should unite the 
Saxon strength with the refined beauty of the Norman. 
That era reaches its ripe manhood with Elizabeth, when 
a Shakespeare, a Bacon, a Raleigh arise. The. age of 
Chaucer is that of its childhood. 

But already before him for fifty years there are signs 
of this mental fermentation ; and the best portrait is 
given in literature. 

At this period the literature of England was repre- 
sented almost wholly by a class of writers, the rhyming 
chroniclers, who were busy with some rifaccimenti of 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, or those quaint stories of Troy 
and Thebes, gotten out of mediaeval Latin. The prose 
romance had now taken the place of the rhymed, and 
the living spirit of the old romance had vanished. The 
minstrels, who had sung at the court and in the market- 
place, were succeeded by the dull tribe of bookmakers, 
like Robert de Brunne with his " Chronykil of England," 
and Adam Davie with his " Life of Alisaunder." In 
their folios, wit and grace and passion are seen no longer, 
unless we except Barbour's " Bruce," which has the ring 
of the Round Table. 

A ! freedome is a nobill thinge ! 
Freedome mayes man to haiff liking ; 
Freedome all solace to man gyffes ; 
He levys at ese that freely levys. 



62 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Now and then in these endless books there are rare 
gems, like the story of Macbeth, which the genius of a 
Shakespeare could recreate into his mighty drama. But 
we read there the change of the popular mind. Other 
thoughts began to stir it ; and the ballads of Sir Bevis 
and Sir Guy could no longer satisfy it. 

It was the revival of the English tongue that led the 
way, or rather showed the ground already gained. In 
1380 the Bible of Wyclif saw the light. The truths 
which the Reformation was to ripen were sown in the 
heart of the people, while as yet they had not reached 
the court or the university. The Bible of Wyclif is the 
marvel of that day. It not only opened the sealed 
Gospel, but it gave its truth a living, national utterance. 
The English tongue, which had had no pure writers since 
1 155, and which for three centuries had been banished 
from the palace, the courts of law, and the song of the 
minstrel, now came forth in its power. Literary men 
recognized its power, and in 1385 it was spoken and 
taught in the schools. It was no longer indeed the old 
Saxon, as we have seen ; it had gone through many 
modifications. But it was at last a national tongue, fit 
for the uses both of the scholar and the people. 

The day of chivalry had set. Literature was no longer 
an affair mainly of the palace, the tournament, the belted 
knight ; it must represent London, with its new life in 
many forms ; its merchants in their velvets and gold 
chains, the man of law who could speak of the rights of 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 63 

the people, the " doctour of phisik," — the scientist and 
sceptic of his day, — the shipman, and the jovial innkeeper. 
There was to come out of this a Chaucer, and " the 
bright consummate flower " of an Elizabethan age. 

The intellectual beginning came with the dawn of the 
fourteenth century. It was among the people, the " lewed 
folk," that this mighty fermentation of thought began. 
The worn-out ceremonial of the Roman Church had 
grown tiresome, and over the whole land appeared a flood 
of popular ballads, dialogues, lampoons, whose burthen 
was the lazy monk and the luxurious prelate. Wyclif 
had already thundered from his pulpit at Lutterworth 
and in the halls of Oxford ; but his learned pamphlets 
were too heavy for the people. Their power lay in the 
rude, strong literature of satire. It was the lively voice 
of popular Protestantism, the common-sense logic, more 
telling than all the theses of Oxford. Nor was it the keen 
rapier of a Juvenal or a Pope, but the hard, well-wielded 
flail in the hand of the peasant. Many of these pieces 
remain in the early collections ; and you read in these 
" Reformers before the Reformation " the best history of 
the time. Even a century before we have a most amusing 
relic of this popular satire, " The Land of Cockayne." 

Farre in sea by Weste Spaine And of pasties beth the walles ; 

Is a land y-hate Cockayne ; Of flesh and fishe and a riche mete, 

Tho' Paradis be mery and brighte, The rikefullest that men may ete ; 

Yet Cockayne is of fairer sighte. The geese yrosted on the spit, 

There is a wel faire Abbaye, Flee to that Abbaye, God wot, 

Of white monkes and of greye ; And gridath : geese all hot, all hot. 
There beth bowers and halles, 



64 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

But the work of this time which best illustrates the 
English mind is the " Vision of Piers Plowman," by 
Langland (1362, but not completed until after 1378). In 
a literary view it is very notable as a specimen of the old, 
alliterative Saxon poetry. We see in it the proof that 
the Saxon yet lingered among the people, and it was 
chosen by its author as the best garb for his satire. It is 
a bold picture of that freshly-awakened religious thought. 
The poem is a series of visions. Asleep on Malvern 
Hills, the poet sees a crowd in the vast meadow beneath ; 
on one hand is the town of Truth, on the other the dun- 
geon of Wrong. A fair lady, " Holy Church," appears ; 
then Lady Mede (Reward), and with her all the vices and 
virtues, falsehood, flattery, peace, war, faith, hope, con- 
science. Each passus is a lively quarrel between these 
characters; Scripture and fathers and homilies are mixed 
in strange medley with the bitterest scorn of the monks, 
the corruption of the cloister, the follies of worship. 
Piers the Plowman, an honest Englishman, represents the 
English religion of old time. 

In a somer seson I seigh a toune on the toft, 

Whan softe was the sonne, Trichliche ymaked. 

I shoop me into shroudes, A deep dale bynethe, 

As I a sheep weere. A dungeon therinne. 

Ac on a May morwenynge A fayre field full of folke 

On Malvern e Hilles Fond I ther bitwene, 

Mi bifel a ferly Of alle manere of men, 

Of fairye me thoghte. The meene and the riche, 

* * * * Werchynge and wandeiynge, 

As I behield unto the east As the world asketb. 
An heigh to thesonne, * * * * 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 



65 



In preeris and in penaunces 

Pultur hem manye, 

Alle for the loue of our Lorde, 

Lyveden full streighte, 

In hope to have after, 

Hevyn, liche blisse. 

Pilgrymes and palmeres 

Plighten hem togidere, 

For to seken Saint Jame 

And seintes at Rome. 

They wenten forth in hire way, 



With many wise tales, 
And hadden leve to lyen 
All hire lyfe after. 
* * * * 

Ther preched a pardoner, 
As he a preest were, 
Broughte forth a bulle 
With many bishopes seeles, 
And seide that hymself mighte 
Assoilen hem alien 
Of falsehede, of fastynge, 
Of vowes ybroken. 



Such was the Saxon strength that heralded Chaucer. 
It will give us the greater idea of his genius, when we 
compare the rudeness of his time. He was to be the 
poet, who should face this speech of the people with the 
grace of the Norman. But we must touch on another of 
the influences which shaped the age of Chaucer. In the 
thirteenth century, especially the latter half, the mind of 
continental Europe began to awake in the spring tide of 
a fresh literature. Italy led the way ; Dante, Petrarch, 
Boccaccio became masters of the new intellectual world. 
The treasures of classic poetry and philosophy were 
opened to eager eyes ; monkish Latin, and dull legends 
were consigned to their dust. It is clear that the spirit 
of the Italian movement was felt in England. We trace 
in Chaucer not only the home-born thoughts of his own 
land, but the bloom of the continental. His scholarship 
was enriched and refined from these sources. There can 
be no doubt, as in the case of Shakespeare, that he was 
skilled in foreign tongues. His own books show it, and 



66 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

disciples like Lydgate speak of him almost with wonder, 
as " master of all knowledge," and indeed you find in 
him legends from Boccaccio : you read Dante in these 
lines from the " Assembly of Foules." 

Thro' me men goe into the blissful place. 
Thro me men goe (then spake the other side) 
Unto the mortell strokes of the spear. 

And you hear him confessing himself a borrower in an- 
other legend. 

Therefor Petrarch writeth 

This storie, which with high stile he enditeth. 

Many of his tales are taken from the " Fabliaux." The 
" Romaunt of the Rose " is a translation, or rather para- 
phrase. 

His " Troilus and Creseide " is borrowed from the " Fil- 
ostrato " of Boccaccio, and his " Legend of Good Women " 
from Ovid's " Epistles." The " Hous of Fame " is after the 
new allegoric model. Even the " Canterbury Tales " are, 
while his own, plainly inspired by Boccaccio's idea of a gath- 
ering of story-tellers. I do not say this to take from his orig- 
inality. There is no perfect originality, since the first 
writer published the first thought. All are borrowers and 
lenders. Goethe says : " Originality is the assimilative 
power, which takes all the materials of the time, but di- 
gests and forms them into its own life." 

English literature did not become the copy of Italian. 
Chaucer was no Dante, and no Boccaccio, although more 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 6? 

like that genial improvisatore than any other; but he is a 
hearty home-bred Englishman. 

In or about the year 1340 Geoffrey Chaucer was born. 
His life extends through the reign of Edward III and 
Richard II into that of Henry, and, beyond that of most 
literary men, it is mingled with the stirring action of his 
day. 

A native of London, of good family, he was educated 
at Cambridge, and, perhaps, if tradition be true, he was 
awhile at Oxford when Wyclif, in the shade of Lutter- 
worth, was meditating the thought so soon to shake 
England. He possessed in the highest sense all the 
culture of his time, and his genius brought him early 
honors (1367) at the court of Edward. As ambassador 
he visited the Continent ; was familiar with the men of 
letters and the great ; and probably met Petrarch, then 
the glory of European scholars. At home he held posts 
of honor. He had an office in the Custom House — an 
honor in that time. We are told, too, of another singu- 
lar perquisite of the laureate, a " pitcher " of wine to be 
daily provided for him (1374). 

But there is in the life of Chaucer a nobler close than 
these years of courtly renown. It was a life of manly ac- 
tion in defence of truth. We know little of the incidents 
of it, but we gather that the poet was the friend and 
favorer of that movement which with Wyclif and after 
him stirred the heart of England. 

Not only in the riot of Wat Tyler, but on every hand 



6 8 ENGLISH LI TERA T URE. 

in the day of Richard II there was an uprising of Eng- 
lish freedom against the oppression of State and Church. 
It broke out in London, the centre then of social move- 
ments, and probably the election of John of Northamp- 
ton as Mayor was the immediate cause. Chaucer, as one 
of the defenders of liberty, was thrown into prison ; and 
though in after years restored in part to honors, he seems 
never again to have been a courtier. His life is ennobled 
by this trial. No servile heart was in him ; he did not 
prostitute his genius to be the minstrel of a despot. But 
to the last he remained the free, high-minded English- 
man. He died in 1400, on the threshold of that next 
century which was to see the birth of Luther. 

We have thus seen in this one mind the culture of his 
age, its courtly grace, its best elements of learning ; and 
united with this, the keen eyesight of the man of the 
people, love of freedom, hatred of superstition, and the 
broadest sympathies. In such a mind England could in- 
deed have its interpreter. 

And here, before passing to Chaucer's poetry, we must 
consider what he did for the formation of an English 
language. It is of deep interest to trace even briefly the 
steps from the rude Anglo-Norman dialect to that rich 
stately " tongue which Shakespeare spake." The Saxon 
speech, although in the long interval, even from Edward 
the Confessor, it had decayed at the court, and was 
scorned by the Norman gentry as the patois of the peas- 
ant, remained in reality the speech of England. It held 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 69 

in it the elements of masculine strength, the words of the 
house, the field, the market. By degrees the foreign 
tongue lost its mastery ; and, as we have seen, the com- 
posite English began to be spoken and taught in the 
schools. But in this process it came forth by no means 
the original Saxon. It did not become an incorporation 
of French and English. The body of it was Saxon, but it 
became refined and enlarged by many changes, which added 
the dialect of the court, the castle, of fashion, and wit, and 
poetry. These changes must be looked on as a growth 
which did much to make it the vehicle of a great litera- 
ture. It passed from its rude orthography, its hard versi- 
fication, and took something of the mellow grace of 
Southern tongues, to become the English of prince and 
people, of the statesman, the dramatist, the historian. 

We may now briefly note these changes as our Saxon 
scholars have traced them, although they are far from 
exact agreement. The Saxon chronicle of 1 1 55 is the 
best standard of the pure undefiled original in its last 
stage. The language as it reappears in the last half of 
the 14th century has gone through its first stage of disin- 
tegration, called semi-Saxon, and its next stage of - early 
English. It has now reached the age called middle Eng- 
lish. The changes have been great. Its rude orthog- 
raphy has been systematized ; the inflection of verb and 
noun quite gone. Its inversion of the syntax has been 
modified. Above all, many Norman words have been 
introduced, so that it may have seemed the Babel of con- 



/O ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

fused speech. It was another hundred years before the 
euphuism of the court could give place to the plain Eng- 
lish of' Ascham and More. 

It is in this middle English period that Chaucer appears. 
He is the linguistic mirror of the time. He abounds in 
Anglo-Norman words to us obsolete, and with their deriv- 
atives from the classic sources, with long polysyllabic 
words, melancolius, dominatioiin, gentilesse. He uses the 
vowel endings that are found in the poetry of the Ro- 
mance languages, and that have been mostly disused by 
our stronger voices ; and he accents the last syllable. 

This feste was, and greater of cortage, 

Than was the revel of hir mariage. 

That with gret sleight and gret difficultee. 

Yet with all these Norman elements, Chaucer is a 
treasure-house of Saxon speech. No writer gives us 
with more homely ease the very talk of the stout miller, 
or of the smith at the anvil ; and if you compare him 
with the Gowers or Lydgates of that age, you feel that 
he had far less of its pedantry. Indeed in reading him 
the task is not in mastering the foreign words, but the 
old, primitive ones now lost ; an eighth of his poetry 
probably is obsolete Saxon. Many curious traces of this 
middle English are to be found in him. There is the 
original infinitive an y in its later form en. 

Him wolde he snibben sharply for the nones. 

There is the original and plural es, retaining in poetry 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 7 1 

its syllabic value ; with the plural inflection of the ad- 
jective. 

And for our faith at Tramissene 
In lestes thries and ay slain his fo. 

The verbal and participial terminations are frequent, 

His berd was wel begunnen for to spring, 
Armed they weren, as I have you told ; 
They gloweden betwixen yelwe and gold. 

Many Saxon forms are there, as, for instance, lope, cor- 
ven ; yaf for gave ; adradde for afraid ; ystrangled, 
ystorven for starved, etc. 

We have thus in Chaucer, despite his outlandish 
Anglo-Norman, the writer who, more than all others, 
fused the language into a purer type. His grace, his 
flexibility, his choice of words are beyond all of his time. 
The chaos passed with him into the first creative day. 
His work was harder than that of Dante and Petrarch : 
they had only to make classic a most harmonious tongue ; 
he must mingle these jarring elements into one. 

He is the first great master of the lofty rhyme. It is 
to him, that we owe the heroic verse of ten syllables and 
five accents. We have indeed specimens of it in ro- 
mance poetry at the close of the twelfth century, as in 
the mystery of the " Foolish Virgins.' Richard of Ham- 
pole in the fourteenth century, forty or fifty years before 
the "Canterbury Tales," wrote in this his "Stimulus 
Conscientiae." But in Chaucer's age the regular romance 
rhyme of eight syllables and four accents, and the 



72 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 

" royall rhythm " of fourteen syllables, which Chapman 
immortalized in his " Homer," were the favorites. 

Minerva wrapt her in the robe that curiously she wove 
With glorious colours as she sate on th' azure floor of Jove. 
And wove the arms that he put on, bent to the tearful field. 
About his broad spread shoulders hung his huge and horrid shield. 

Chapnan. 

Chaucer saw the power of the ten syllable verse, and 
made it henceforth the classic. It is curious, however, 
to trace its destiny. Even after his day it is spoken of 
by Gascoyne as the riding rhyme (from the mounted 
pilgrims of the Tales) " which our Master and Father 
Chaucer used in his ' Canterbury Tales ' and divers other 
delectable and light enterprises " ; but he adds, that 
" rhythm royall is fitted for a grave discourse." At the 
beginning of the seventeenth century it gains new dig- 
nity ; Jonson designed an epic in couplets, and Dryden 
established it as the " heroic verse." 

But we must pass from the verse to the character of 
Chaucer's poetry. England has given birth to no more 
many-sided genius in literature. Although best known 
in the " Canterbury Tales," we have every form of the 
culture of that age in poetry, and there is no better prose 
till the day of More. It is curious to hear him at the 
close of the Tales speak of his translation of Boethius, 
and a few such duller works of a religious cast, as his 
" Consolation," and beg pardon for the light stories of 
love and humor 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 73 

In his " Romaunt of the Rose," " Hous of Fame," 
" Assembly of Foules," " Flower and Leaf," we have the 
most exquisite type of the romantic and allegorical fancy 
of that day. They abound in delicate humor, in fair 
pictures of nature, and in the best features of that chiv- 
alric spirit of courtesy which Anglo-Norman culture 
could give. There are rare passages in each of them. 
They are only dull reading now, because we have lost 
the fantastic tone of that day. 

But the " Canterbury Tales " are always his master- 
work. They reproduce the very form in which the rich, 
dramatic life of society had its full expression. Precise- 
ly so the literature of Italy had its popular beginnings 
with the " Decameron " of Boccaccio. The story-teller 
was the homely nurse of the people ; the inspiration was 
drawn no longer from the metrical romance, but from 
the real world, as in a later day Fielding succeeded to 
Richardson's stately Sir Charles Grandison. In the story 
all the thoughts and fancies of that motley world, — its 
grave moods and its jests, its shrewd criticism, its biting 
satire, its heresies under a pleasant mask, — all had their 
utterance; all the strange marvels of the day, Cathay 
and Prester John, dwarfs and anthropophagi, were told 
to open ears ; all the late found treasures of classic lore, 
the history of " Duk Theseus," of " the enchantment of 
Medea and Circe," are mingled in quaint anachronism 
with the faces and manners of the Middle Age. 

I think, however, that Chaucer was happier than Boc- 



74 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 

caccio in his choice of a plan. In the Italian novelist there 
is something inhuman in the carelessness of the laughing 
tellers of stories amidst the plague of Florence. In the 
group of pilgrims you have the very picture of English 
life. There is nothing even out of keeping in the relig- 
ious pilgrimage to St. Thomas a. Becket's shrine, for 
the religious pilgrims of the Middle Age were quite as 
much at home at the Tabard Inn in Southwark ; and 
mine host is in his way a sound Christian man, though 
a coarse jester. We have all England in that gathering. 
All the world was imaged there, not only knights and 
ladies, but "men of lawes," "doctours of physik," good 
wives of Bath, rascal friars, indulgence-sellers, tavern- 
keepers, and godly parsons; the living, breathing, bar- 
gaining, swearing, drinking, quarrelling, joking, praying 
England. 

We have here the character of Chaucer's poetry. His 
charm is truth of nature. We may distinguish him from 
the early ballad-writers of the Romance age. With him 
poetry is no longer a simple minstrelsy; it is an art. But 
it is art in its first, fresh stage, before it has become ideal. 
You have not in him, as in Spenser, a poet's fairyland 
of fancy, " both what they half create and what perceive," 
nor the gorgeous imaginings of Milton ; and in this 
higher sphere of creative genius we cannot place him. It 
is the poetry of faithful, objective vision ; the art of the 
photograph. There is, indeed, a yet higher truth of nat- 
ure than this ; Shakespeare is at once real and ideal ; his 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 7$ 

Macbeth and Iago are eternal types of the human heart, 
the deeper reality that outlives all change of costume. 
Chaucer only gives us the scenes, the men of his time. 
But there is a charm in such poetry which nothing else 
can give. 

We may draw an illustration from every life-like page. 
We turn to his description of natural scenery. He is the 
most exquisite of landscape painters, with an eye for all 
that is rich in form or coloring ; but it is no dainty para- 
dise he draws, it is his own island — its graceful hills, its 
green hedgerows, its oaks and primroses. In a later day 
descriptive poetry becomes mere fancy or sentiment, and 
loses this simple reality. The landscape of Claude has 
" a light that never was on sea or land " ; the shepherds 
and shepherdesses of Poussin are Arcadian beauties. If 
you look at some of our modern landscapes, you are 
struck with their vagueness ; there are Gothic temples, 
and groves, and rivers, but you cannot tell whether the 
trees are oaks or elms, or the flowers genuine ; and you 
find that the artist painted his bowers of beauty in his 
studio, with no look at nature save through his skylight. 
It is so with poetry. Ninetenths of descriptive, pastoral 
verse is this effusion of sentimentalities about nature. 
Chaucer is a pre-Raphaelite. There is a particularity in 
every scene, and it was shrewdly guessed by Pope that 
each was a copy of some original. Each garden is one 
in which he has walked; each flower is a primrose or 
a columbine. 



?6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

And to a pleasaunt grove I gan passe, 
Long er the brighte sunne up-risen was, 
In which were okes greate, streight as a line, 
Under the which the grasse so fresh of hewe 
Was newly sprong, and an eight foot or nine 
Every tree wel fro his fellow grew. 
With branches brode, laden with leves newe, 
That sprongen out agen the sunne-shine, 
Some very red, and some a glad light grene. 
On every bowgh the briddes herde I synge, 
With voys of aungel in her armony, 
That besyed hem her briddes forthe to bringe ; 
********* 

A ravysshinge swetnesse, 
That God, that maker ys of al and Lorde, 
Ne herde never bettir, as I gesse ; 
Therewith a wynde, unnethe hyt myghte lesse, 
Made in the leves grene a noyse softe, 
Accordant to the foulys songe on lofte. 

— Assembly of Foules. 

We are much struck by the likeness between our poet 
and Dante, in their fondness for the effects of light on 
the landscape. Chaucer's sunrises are the most glowing 
pictures in the language. He is an early riser, and has 
seen the very glories that flame in his verse. 

Uproos the sonne, and uproos Emelye. 

The busy larke, messager of day, 
Salueth in hire song the morwe gray ; 
And fyry Phebus ryseth up so bright, 
That al the orient laugheth of the light, 
And with his stremes dryeth in the greves 
The silver dropes, hongyng on the leeves. 

— Knightes Tale. 

Ther sat I doune amonge the feire floures. 
And saw the briddes crepe out of her boures, 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. J? 

Ther as they had rested hem al the nyght ; 
They were so joyful of the dayes lyght, 
That they beganne of Mayes ben ther houres. 

They could that servise alle bye rote ; 
Ther was also many a lovely note ! 
Somme songe loude as they hadde pleyned, 
And somme in other maner voys yfeyned, 
And somme al oute with a lowde throte. 

They pruned hem, and made hem ryght gay, 
And daunseden and leuten on the spray ; 
And evermore two and two in fere. 

— The Cuckow and the Nightingale. 



But we see this truth of nature yet more in what is his 
proper field, the description of men and manners. He is 
no historic painter like Tasso, nor can he draw a Raffaelle 
or a Satan ; but he is a portrait-painter of the keenest 
eye and nicest hand. His heroes are flesh and blood. 
For him every man, as every garden, is an individual ; 
and there is the richest variety in his studies. Each 
character, from the knight to the serving-man, is com- 
pletely finished. His Franckeleyn, his Knight, his Doctor 
and Merchant, are portraits. His Wife of Bath and 
Prior esse are perfect. Yet, when we turn to the coarser 
side and examine the sharp-cut features of the motley 
crowd, we see what infinite humor he has. We should 
know the Reve or the Pardonere if we saw them walking 
in Broadway. There is no slashing caricature, but each 
stroke tells the artist. It is Flemish painting, where you 
may catch the foam of the beer tumbling into the brown 



7% ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 

jug and smell the pipes. There is coarseness enough in 
many of his tales, as in all of that day, when women were 
not readers ; but it is not coarseness of heart. We can 
find nowhere more exquisite pictures of womanly virtue 
and maternal tenderness. The old story of " Griselda " 
has a charm that never tires. More and better : with all 
his shrewd humor, his biting satire, there is never a sneer 
at piety. He paints some lecherous or smooth rascal of 
a monk ; but he gives you also the matchless face of the 
good parish priest. 

In brief, he pictures human nature, English nature, as 
it was in the day of Richard and Henry ; its graver 
thought and its comedy, its nobleness and -its vice, its 
friar and its Lollard, its prince and its yeomanry. 

The Country Squire. 



A Frankeleyn ther was in his companye ; 
Whit was his berde, as is the dayesye. 



An househaldere, and that a gret, was he ; 
Seynt Julian he was in his countre. 



Withoute bake mete was never his hous, 
Of fleissch and fissch, and that so plentyvous, 
It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke, 
Of alle deyntees that men cowde thynke. 



His table dormant in his halle alway 
Stood redy covered al the longe day. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. Jg 

The Clerk. 

A clerk ther was of Oxenford also, 
That unto logik hackle longe tyme i-go, 
Al-so lene was his hors as is a rake, 
And he was not right fat, I undertake ; 
But lokede holwe and therto soburly, 
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy, 

****** 

For him was lever have at his beddes heed 
Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed, 
Of Aristotil, and of his philosophic, 
Then robus riche, or fithul, or sawtrie. 

The Doctour of Phtsik. 



For he was groundud in astronomye ; 

He kepte his pacient wondurly wel 

In houres by his magik naturel. 

He knew the cause of every maladye, 

Were it of cold, or hete, or moyst or drie, 

****** 

Wel knew he the olde Esculapius, 

And Deiscorides, and eeke Rufus ; 

Averrois, Damascen, and Constantyn ; 
Bernard, and Gatisden, and Gilbertyn. 

His studie was but litel on the Bible. 



The Prior esse. 

And sche was clept madame Englentyne. 

Ful wel sche sang the servise devyne, 

Entuned in hire nose ful semyly ; 

And Frensch sche spak ful faire and fetysly, 

****** 



SO ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

At mete wel i-taught was sche withalle ; 
Sche leet no morsel from hire lippes falle, 
Ne wette hire fyngres in hire sauce deepe. 

But for to speken of hire conscience, 
Sche was so charitable and so pitous, 
Sche wolde weepe if that sche saw a mous 
Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde. 
Of smale houndes hadde sche, that sche fedde 
"With rostud fleissch, and mylk, and wastel breed. 
But sore wepte sche if oon of hem were deed, 
Or if men smot it with a yerde smerte : 
And al was conscience and tendre herte. 

The Wif of Bathe. 

Hire keverchefs weren ful fyne of grounde ; 

I durste swere they weyghede ten pounde, 

That on a Sonday were upon hire heed. 

Hire hosen were of fyn Scarlett reed. 

Ful streyte y-teyed, and schoos ful moyste and newe. 

Bold was hire face, and fair, and reed of hewe. 

Sche was a worthy womman al hire lyfe, 

Housbondes atte chirche dore hadde sche fyfe. 

The Marchaunt. 

A Marchaunt was ther with a forked berd, 
In motteleye and high on hors he sat, 
Uppon his heed a Flaundrisch bever hat ; 
His resons he spak full solempnely, 
Sownynge alway the encres of his wynning. 

The Monk. 

A manly man, to ben an abbot able, 

Ful many a deynte hors hadde he in stable : 

He yaf not of the text a pulled hen, 

That seith, that hunters been noon holy men ; 

What ! schulde he studie, and make himselven wood, 

Uppon a book in cloystre alway to powre, 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 8 1 

Or swynke with his handes, and laboure, 

As Austyn byt ? How schal the world be served ? 

Lat Austyn have his swynk to him reserved. 

I saw his sieves purfiled atte hond 

With grys, and that the fynest of a lond. 

His bootes souple, his hors in gret estat. 

Now certainly he was a fair prelat ; 

He was not pale as a for-pyned goost, 

A fat swan loved he best of eny roost. 

The Frere. 

Ful wel beloved and famulier was he 
With frankeleyns overal in his cuntrie, 
And eek with worthy wommen of the toun : 
Full sweetly herde he confessioun, 
And pleasant was his absolucioun ; 
He was an esy man to yeve penance 
Ther as he wiste to han a good pitance. 

The Pardoner. 
****** 
That streyt was comen from the court of Rome. 
His walet lay byforne him in his lappe, 
Bret-ful of pardoun come from Rome al hoot. 
He seide, he hadde a gobet of the sey 
That Seynt Peter hadde, whan that he wente 
Upon the see, til Jhesu Crist him hente. 
He hadde a cros of latoun ful of stones, 
And in a glas he hadde pigges bones. 
And thus with feyned flaterie and japes, 
He made the persoune and the people his apes. 

The Persoun. 

But riche he was of holy thought and werk. 
He was also a lerned man, a clerk 
That Cristes gospel gladly wolde preche ; 
Wyd was his parisch, and houses fer asondur, 
But he ne lafte not for reyne ne thondur, 
In sikenesse ne in meschief to visite 



82 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

The ferrest in his parissche, moche and lite, 
He waytud after no pompe ne reverence, 
Ne maked him a spiced conscience, 
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 
He taught, and ferst he folwed it himselve. 

We have made but a slight study of the first great poet 
of England ; yet it may shew us that we shall prize his 
genius more highly the more we become acquainted with 
him, and that Chaucer is indeed among the chief masters 
of his art in any age ; a healthier satirist than Pope, and 
without a rival in the charm of perfect truthfulness. To 
him more than any other, until we reach the golden age 
of Elizabeth, we owe the growth of English literature 
into its fuller strength and grace. 

Although he was a scholar and a favorite of the court, 
he had the courage to choose the speech of the people ; 
he led it out of its rude youth to manhood, and gave it a 
place among the tongues of cultured Europe. We may 
estimate his influence when we remember that all Eng- 
lish poetry until the time of Surrey, just on the eve of the 
Elizabethan period, is little else than the imitation of 
Chaucer's style of thought and verse. We speak to-day 
the language he moulded. Poetry was to have more crea- 
tive and more perfect inspiration than his, but the mind 
of Chaucer is the heart of oak, out of which were to 
be hewn the massive beams and carved the rich orna- 
ments of the building. 

But it is in a far higher rank than that of the maker of 
polished verse that Chaucer must be placed, when we 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 83 

have thus read him by the light of English history. We 
are not to think of the great poet as if he were only the 
singer born to amuse men. It was with the truest sense 
of his calling that the old Saxon styled him the scop, the 
mind that shapes ; and that not merely a world of imagi- 
nation, but the mighty thoughts, the faith and hope of 
the world of men in which they live. An age of dillet an- 
te ism may have its scholars and elegant verse-makers. 
But it is during great periods of social movement that 
the great poets have been born ; and in every such time 
it has been ideal minds, an ^Eschylus, a Dante, a Milton, 
who stood foremost as the prophets of their generation. 
Literature has no feature so noble as this, that its men of 
genius have been so often the champions of freedom, of 
human right, of social good. And it was especially so in 
this day of our English poet. We think of the Reforma- 
tion as the work of Luther and of Wyclif before him ; 
but it was Dante in the heart of a corrupt Italy who 
spoke with indignant tones of Pontiff and Church ; it was 
Petrarch who shared the love of freedom with Savonarola, 
and Chaucer whose verse helped on the cause of a purer 
faith in his own land, as truly as the preacher of Lutter- 
worth. We have already noticed some incidents in his 
life which prove that he was on the side of the " Reform- 
ers before the Reformation," as they are well called ; of 
the earnest souls of that mediaeval church that already 
hailed the coming of the day. But whether he was in di- 
rect union with the Lollards, as has been claimed, his 



84 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

poems are enough to shew that his influence was on the 
conscience and life of his time. It was not merely the 
doctor of theology in his theses before the university, 
it was this keen painter, who held up the picture of the 
obscene monk, or the worldly prelate by the side of the 
honest parson, and taught the people to fear God and 
hate hypocrisy, to whom England owed that education 
of the national mind without which the work of Cranmer 
and Ridley would have been in vain. An age when mer- 
chant and scholar read " The Canterbury Tales " was al- 
ready far advanced toward.its ripe manhood. It was of this 
age that Chaucer was the herald ; and he remains for us 
and all English time one of the keenest of the seers 
into the future. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE AGE OF SPENSER. 

It is to the poet who stands, after Chaucer, foremost 
among the masters of early English literature, until we 
reach the drama of Shakespeare and the epic of Milton, 
that our attention is now drawn. The " Faerie Queene " 
of Edmund Spenser is not read to-day, because for most 
minds its allegorical costume is now as faded as the huge 
ruff and head-gear of the Elizabethan time ; and only 
the lovers of our mother speech know what wealth of 
fancy is hidden in its cantos, or what a power it had in 
shaping the beauty of our verse for after time. For that 
reason we can choose no name which shall better bring 
before us the spirit of that age. 

Our best introduction to his poetry is in a glance at 
that grand period of English history in which he appears, 
and the causes which ripened its intellectual growth. 

It was a marvellous time. If we recall the swiftness 
with which the mind of England passed from its crude 
beginnings to such culture, or its manifold fruit in every 
field, in the drama or the romantic epic or lyric verse, in 
history and essay, we may well say that it has no like- 
ness before or after it. There had been little hitherto of 

35 



86 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

strictly English literature. English prose was not born 
at all, save in a few monkish chronicles and polemic 
treatises. The " Utopia" of More was written in Latin, 
and his historic fragment stands alone, as a model of 
strong, keen Saxon speech. We have in poetry only the 
great name of Chaucer, followed by a crowd of dull imi- 
tators, whose relation to the work of our nobler artist we 
shall presently see. The drama had not passed beyond 
the rude " moralities" or a few stiff academic pieces like 
" Gorboduc." But all at once we see the dawning of 
the new age. It is, as if, like the first voyagers over the 
Atlantic, after picking up in the waste a bough or two 
laden with spring blossoms, and hearing the voice of a 
stray landbird, we had suddenly come on the vision of a 
fresh continent. It is the time of Spenser and Sidney, 
Raleigh and Bacon, Marlowe and Decker, Herbert and 
Hooker, and of Shakespeare, king of English poets. Yet 
to explain so wonderful a flowering of genius is not so 
hard, if we remember always the living law of literature, 
that it is the outgrowth of the whole people. Hazlitt, in 
his brilliant lectures on that age, has handled this topic 
with great power. I would, however, put first the cause 
which he puts last, I mean the influence of the English 
Reformation. It is a shallow view of that history, if we 
look on it as only a change of religious ideas. It was 
the new birth of the whole national life, and because 
England then awoke in the consciousness of her intel- 
lectual and moral personality, she was capable of a home- 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 87 

born literature in all its fresh and varied utterance. 
None can read the essays of Bacon or the poetry of 
Spenser, without feeling how the sense of freedom from 
the intellectual fetters of the past breathes in the manly 
thought of the age. That influence was strong, again, in 
the shaping of the English tongue. There had been a 
gradual growth of the language, out of its semi-Norman 
form ; and we perceive already in the prose of More 
and the poetry of Surrey, that the cumbrous dialect was 
giving way to the simpler, home-bred speech. But the 
opening of the Bible, in the tongue " understanded of 
the people," from divine to ploughman, with the Book of 
Common Prayer, did more than any thing else for the 
unity of the national life. Literature as well as faith 
passed out of the tutelage of the Church. It did not, as 
in a later time, lose its Christian spirit in the change; 
but the Latin language was no longer the despot over 
the style of the scholar, any more than the Latin creed 
over the worshipper. 

But if this national awakening were the chief cause of 
such literary life, we cannot pass by others that blended 
largely with it. We should name chiefly the knowledge 
of the ancient classic authors and that of romance and 
Italian literature, already in its full bloom. There had 
be.en in the time of Chaucer an opening of these rich 
sources ; indeed half of his materials is taken directly 
from the French, and a good deal from the Italian ; but 
in the main the parchments of the monkish cloister 



88 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and the floating stories of French romance made up the 
learning of scholars. They were now thrilling through 
all their pulses with the new wine of the age, and read 
Plato, Tully, Plutarch, Virgil, and Tacitus in the better 
text. There was a divine intoxication in the first 
draught. The poet painted Caesar and Coriolanus, and 
Duke Theseus; and the divine garnished his homilies 
with Greek and Latin. We can see, of course, a vein of 
pedantic affectation in many writers of this time, yet the 
strong English genius was not lost, and the style grew 
richer by the study of such great masters. 

We have in Chapman's " Homer " a more Homeric 
music than Pope could give us ; and the " Tasso" of 
Fairfax is richer than the tame paraphrase of Hoole. 
Nor can any reader of Shakespeare or Ben Jonson fail to 
see what wealth of material was drawn by the genius of 
that time from the newer literature of the Continent. It 
was an age of eager scholarship, and even the half-let- 
tered caught much of its spirit from the translations, 
which brought home foreign thought and life. 

All these elements entered into the national mind, and 
made that period at the same time one of original yet 
varied power. It is only within a generation, since the 
day of Coleridge, that we have begun to study the old 
English literature. We have passed from neglect to hero 
worship ; and now, amidst the many noble critics to whom 
we owe our knowledge of the past, from Caedmon to the 
early drama, we find a host of dilettanti, who praise with 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 89 

as little judgment as in the day of Johnson or Gay they 
scorned the fathers. There is a rage for the antique. It 
is sought after in rare editions, as the grotesques of old 
oak are copied in our furniture shops. All this is absurd 
enough. We need not worship the Elizabethan age. It 
was not a time when the language or the literary taste 
was fully ripened. Style is always a slower and later 
grace, which seldom comes with the first age of pregnant 
thought. Poetry had not then cast off its involutions 
and stiff conceits. Prose is never perfected till after 
poetry. If we compare the " Reflections " of Burke with 
the long-spun sentences of Hooker or the "Areopagitica " 
of Milton, we see how much more perfect the constructive 
grace of the first than the heavy cloth of gold which en- 
cumbers the rich thought of the older masters. But the 
real power of that early literature lies in its fresh, original 
life. The language was just at that point of formation 
where, with all the unsmelted mass of Anglo-Norman 
words, and the later pedantry of classic learning, it kept 
the pithy, homely strength of the Saxon. We find in 
Bacon, or Raleigh, or Hooker, and even later in the quaint 
grandiloquence of Sir Thomas Browne, more of the rich 
music of the English speech than in any time after them. 
But more than this, the English genius was so strong in 
home-born life, that even when it came into so large con- 
tact with foreign sources it received into itself all that it 
borrowed. Spenser is not another Ariosto. Shakespeare 
makes Coriolanus or Hamlet an Englishman. Daniel, 



90 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Davies, Drayton, are of a type of philosophical poets, born 
only in their own island. Bacon, with his world-wide knowl- 
edge, belongs to his nation as well in his grand diction as 
in his practical aim. English humor has its distinct type 
as truly as English statesmanship. This is the charm of 
that period. We cannot reproduce it, for the mould was 
broken in the casting of the work. Other influences with 
the day of the Restoration weakened the manhood of 
the literature as well as the national life. There is a 
broad chasm between Milton and Dryden, Shakespeare 
and Congreve. But we have happily outgrown the taste 
of the time when a history of the lives of the poets be- 
gan with Cowley, and Addison's Cato was preferred 
to Hamlet ; and we can know to-day " the thewes and 
sinews of our ancestors." 

First of the great names of this great age stands that of 
Spenser, because he links the historic growth of English 
poetry with the time of Chaucer. The " Faerie Queene" 
is in its day what the " iEneid " was to the Augustan 
literature. And for this reason we should glance briefly 
at the poets who filled the interval, not so much to recall 
them from the tomb where most of them are well buried, 
as to show the steps to the poetic art which led to the 
Elizabethan epic. In Chaucer we have the master, to 
whom we owe the earliest model of a smooth, harmo- 
nious verse. 

He made the Englishe swete upon his tonge. 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 9 1 

Yet he was in the best sense a realist ; a Boccaccio in 
rhyme, who painted English character and English life 
with a keen, homely strength. In Spenser we have the 
idealist, with a richer constructive fancy and a higher 
form of art. The genius of Chaucer created a school, 
which followed him in the same style of versified story- 
telling, and the flowing measure he had given them, but 
with little of his real power. We may unearth a few of 
these intermediate poets from their sleep in the old 
English texts. Occleve is one of these imitators, a 
Chaucer " sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans every 
thing." His " Lament for Chaucer " is a happy blending 
of pathos and bathos. 

But wele awaye, so is myn herte wo, 

That the honour of Englishe tounge is deed, 

Of which I was wonte have counseil and rede ! 

O maister dere and fader reverent ! 

My maister Chaucer, fioure of eloquence ; 

O universal fadir in science ! 

Alias ! that thou thyne excellent prudence 

In thy bedde mortel myghtest not bequethe ; 

What eyled Dethe ? Alias ! why wolde he sle the ? 

O Dethe ! that didest not harme singulere 

In slaughtre of hym, but alle this lond it smerteth, 

But natheles yit hastowe no powere 

His name to slee ; his hye vertu asterteth 

Unslayne from the, which aye as lifely herteth 

With bookes of his ornat endityng. 

In Lydgate of Bury, however, we have some veins of 
poetic beauty, although he lacks the wit and the fresh- 
ness of Chaucer ; it is a long journey through his " Fall 
of Troy," and " Thebaid." These old rhymers sat 



92 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

down at their work as the Greeks to the siege of Troy 
town, and gloried in huge historic epics. Yet there are 
passages of rich description, as well as gathered strength, 
that recall the best of his master. 

God hath a thousand handes to chastyse j 

A thousand dartes of punicioun, 
A thousand bowes made in divers wyse, 

A thousand arc-blasts bent in his donjon. 

When Aurora the sylver droppes shene, 
Her teares, had shedde upon the fresh greene, 
Complayning aye in weepynge and in sorrowe 
Her chyldren's dethe in everye somer morowe. 

But the poet who gives us, far more than his English 
copyists, the national charm of Chaucer, is of Scottish 
and royal blood. We pass by other Scots of the same 
time to remember King James I, who wrote the " King's 
Quhair," a rare gem of art. We find no sweeter bit of 
landscape painting in early verse than this : 

So thick the beuis and the leves grene 
Beschadit all the allyes that there were, * 
And myddis every herbere mycht be sene 
The scharpe, grene, suete jenepere, 
Growing so fair with branchis here and there, 
That, as it seymt to a lyf without, 
The bewis spred the herbere all about 
And on the smale, grene twistis sat 
The lytil suete nyghtingale and song 
So loud and clere, the ympnis consecrat 
Of luvis use, now soft, now lowd among, 
That all the gardynis and the wallis rong 
Ryght of thaire song. 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 93 

In hir was youthe, beautee with humble aport, 
Bountee, richesse and womanly faiture ; 
In worde, in dede, in schap, in contenance, 
That nature mycht no more hir childe auance. 

At this point a dearth of poetry begins, and lasts for 
more than a half century. The civil wars left no time 
for letters, until, under Henry VII, England gained a little 
repose. Scotland as before leads the way. We cannot 
more than name Dunbar, in 1465, a poet of rare power 
in description and in satire. His " Dance of Deadly 
Sins" gives an idea of his genius. Gawin Douglas is 
worth noting, as the first translator of classic verse, yet 
he wears the stiff plate armor of the time. Barclay's 
" Ship of Fooles " is a clumsy satire. But the poem we 
should specially note is Hawe's " Pastime of Pleasure." 
It is the most amazing pile of allegory, after the same 
structure as the " Temple of Glas," by Lydgate, of in- 
finite tediousness, although with touches of fancy. But 
the interest it has for us here, is that it foreshadows Spen- 
ser; we read in it the tendency to allegorical writing, 
found more and more in all these poets, but here pushed 
to its last excess. Imagine such a time when men could 
read a poem of forty-three books, where the whole sys- 
tem of Middle Age education was imaged under the guise 
of knights and maidens and giants of romance ; where 
Graund Amoure, the mind in search of Wisdom, goes on 
his adventures, enters the Tower of Doctrine, is pre- 
sented to Mistresse Logike, Rhetorike, and Musike, then 
to Dame Geometrie and Astronomie, talks with them of 



94 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 

their lore, and so proceeds to the town of Chivalry, 
where he is nursed by Fortitude and Perseverance, and 
after slaying allegoric monsters, exploring the marvels 
of the five internal wittes and " supernal bodies," mar- 
ries la Belle Pucelle, and lives happily till Age and Death 
arrest him, whereon Remembrance makes his epitaph, 
and Time, Fame, and Eternitye close up the grand phan- 
tasmagory of life. 

" Madame," quod I, " forasmuche as there be 

Eight parts of speeche, I would knowe right fayne 

What a nowne substantive is in his degree, 

And wherefore it is called so certayne." 

To whom she answered, right quietly agayne ; 

Saying alwaye, that a nowne substantive 

Might stand without helpe of an adjective. 

In this quaint grotesque poetry we know the mind of 
the time. Allegory is the early, picturesque form, in 
which its imagination builds in these " shews of sense " 
the ideas of science, religion, human history, which it 
has not yet clearly grasped. All minds were steeped in 
it, and indeed the historian Leo struck the keynote of 
the whole Middle Age, when he called it the age of fan- 
tasy. The divine turned Scripture into allegory ; and 
the man of science saw occult mysteries in the stars and 
planets ; the satirist of the church clothed his wit in the 
shape of the moral virtues and vices ; and the poet gave 
voice to the common thought. And therefore we may 
find a real pleasure, as we do in the rich oaken grotesques 
of the cathedral, in even the cumbrous rhythm, the 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 95 

" linked sweetness, long drawn out " of these allegorical 
masters. It was out of material like this that the poet 
of the " Faerie Queene," was to weave his more perfect 
creation, and Milton to build his grander epic of Par- 
adise. 

There is still another period which had its influence 
on the poetic form of English verse. With the age of 
Henry VIII the school of Chaucer gave way to the more 
courtly style made fashionable by Surrey and Wyatt. 
Of the lesser stars of that day, are Roy, Heywood the Epi- 
grammatist, and Sir David Lyndsay, a very dull Trouba- 
dour. More important than all others, from his origi- 
nality, is the strange laureate, John Skelton. It is to him 
we owe the macaronic verse. Yet under the doggerel 
there is not only a wonderful strength of Saxon speech, 
but a rollicking Rabelaisian satire, which made Skelton 
the mouth-piece of the people and the scourge of all from 
Wolsey to the strolling friar. 

My name is Colyn Cloute, It hath in it some pyth. 

I purpose to shake oute 

All my connyng bagge, But Doctour Bullatus, 

Like a clerkely hagge ; Parum litteratus, 

For though my ryme be ragged, As wyse as Waltom's calfe, 

Tattered and iagged, Must preche, a Goddes halfe, 

Rudely rayne beaten, In the pulpyt solempnely ; 

Rusty and moth eaten, More mete in the pillory. 

If ye take well therwith 

In Surrey and Wyatt English poetry received from 
Italy a new form of graceful expression. We cannot 
praise them as some critics have done in a day when 



9°" < ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

poetry was held to be chiefly an art of nice rhyming. As 
young, courtly wits, they had travelled abroad, when the 
fame of Petrarch had created a tribe of sonneteers ; and 
they reproduced all the cold concetti of the time. Their 
graceful madrigals became the delight of lords and 
ladies. Each Petrarch had his Laura; and love sighed in 
the most witty, frigid, sugar-coated verses. But if they 
are unreal lovers they are natural harmonists. English 
poetry had thus far borrowed the rhymed couplet from the 
Norman-French, with the alternate versification by the in- 
troduction of middle rhyme, and afterward dividing the 
line. The Latin monkish poems had supplied Chaucer's he- 
roic verse and the Alexandrine. Many ballad stanzas, 
mixed rhymes, and song rhymes had been added. But the 
Italians in their musical tongue had carried this art much 
further. Surrey tried his skill in the terza rima of Dante, 
in the sonnet, and in the ottava rima, which Spenser fol- 
lowed. 

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, 

With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale. 
The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; 

The turtle to her mate hath told her tale. 
Summer is come, for every spray now springs ; 

The hart hath hung his old head on the pale ; 
The buck in brake his winter coat he sings ; 

The fishes flete with new repaired scale ; 
The adder all her slough away she slings ; 

The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale ; 
The busy bee her honey now she myngs ; 

Winter is worn that was the flowers bale. 
And thus I see among these pleasant things 
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs ! 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 97 

Of Beauty. 

Ah, bitter sweet, infecting is the poison, 

Thou farest as fruit, that with the frost is taken, 

To-day redy ripe, to-morrow all beshaken. 

Where beauty so her perfect seed hath sown, 

Of other graces follow needs there must. 

I could rehearse, if that I would, 

The whole effect of Nature's plaint, 

When she had lost the perfect mould, 

The like to whom she could not paint. 

With wringing hands how she did cry, 

And what she said I know it, aye ! 

We are now ready to understand the poetry of Spenser 
as the ripe fruit of all this growth. Our study here will 
be chiefly of his great poem. It is the mark of his 
genius, that his was not the gift of the lighter lyric ; he 
needed a wide world of fancy to play in, and to dwarf 
him in small verses would be like putting Michael Angelo 
to carve figures on an ivory fan. We have the key to 
the " Faerie Queene " in the mind of the age. It may 
be doubted if, even in this revival of old English letters, 
more than the devoted few to-day read through this long 
poem. We can hardly imagine how it could have been 
the delight, not only of scholars, but of a court of fine 
gentlemen and dames in the day of Elizabeth. But if 
we now recall what we have seen of the allegorical feat- 
ure of that early literature, we shall at once learn the 
secret. The age of Elizabeth was the exodus of chivalric 
romance. The modern world of science, of national law, 
of commerce, was coming out of the feudal past. Prot- 



98 ENGLISH LITERA TURE, 

estant thought had already stript away much of the 
fantastic beauty of the old religion ; and science had 
begun to doubt many of the legends of history. Arthur 
and Launcelot, Charlemagne and Roland, were no longer 
men of flesh and blood ; nor did any listen to the stories 
of giant and dragon, with the childlike faith of former 
men. All had become fancy, yet it was still a delightful 
fancy. In the country of Cervantes chivalry had grown 
ridiculous, and poor Don Quixote tilted at windmills. 
Yet the sentiment of chivalry was not wholly dead ; in 
the court of Elizabeth it was by no means ridiculous. 
There still lingered about it somewhat of the old charm 
of Norman romance; Sidney imaged the grace of the 
" parfait, gentle knight"; Raleigh was crusader and 
pilgrim ; and the maiden queen in her fantastic ruff kept 
up the stately manners with the euphuistic speech of 
her time. 

Here we have the secret of Spenser's own conception 
of its fitness to his readers. To us the " Fairie Queene " 
is a tiresome allegory, because we have outlived all this 
romantic feeling. But the poet reflected the setting 
rays, still gorgeous on that horizon of the age of chivalry; 
and as an earlier race read the metrical romances and be- 
lieved them, so this read Spenser and dreamed with him. 
They entered lovingly into the fiction, like the happy 
Captain Jackson in " Elia," who served his mutton chop 
as turtle, and his ale as Imperial Tokay. The life of the 
court was a masquerade, and if we were dressed with 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 99 

roses on our shoes and marvellous headgear, we should 
have perhaps the same style of speech that now seems so 
fulsome. To the reader of Spenser's time that form 
was not wearisome, its bewildering maze was its charm ; 
each dame fancied herself the gentle Una, and each 
cavalier mirrored himself in SirGuyon. It was a wonder- 
land of romance. Yet another feature of that day gives 
charm to the allegory. English commerce had already 
opened a new world ; but it was not as now, when our 
men of science measure to a hair the height of Cheops; 
all that lay at a distance was surrounded by the penum- 
bra of marvel, and the fancy painted a fairy land, where 
as strange adventures might be met as in the poem. It 
was thus that Spenser hit the very humor of his age. 
Nay, it is a curious fact in illustration of this viev/, that 
much of his poetic dialect is made up of words already- 
archaic in his own day, which he chose as the rich, quaint 
setting of his fancies. What were the design and struct- 
ure of the " Faerie Queene " ? This is a question which 
has led to the most amusing chaos of opinions. Some 
censure the want of unity of the plan ; others find in the 
allegory a fearful monster, as if, in Hazlitt's phrase, " it 
would bite them." I would sooner read through the 
whole poem than twenty pages of commentary. There 
is no mystery in its ground plan. Spenser has told us in 
his letter to Raleigh all we want. " The general end of 
all the bookes is to fashion a gentleman or noble person 
in vertuous and gentle discipline." "I labour to pour- 



100 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

traict in Arthure the image of a brave knight, perfected 
in the twelve Morall Vertues." His design, then, was to 
have twelve books, each of them giving the adventures 
of one knight, who personifies a virtue, and all at last 
united in Arthur, who is Magnificence or Magnanimity, 
the crown of the twelve. Had he finished the work, the 
last cantos would have brought them together and un- 
locked the allegory. Six books and a fragment alone 
remain. Elfin land is the scene of the story. The queen 
holds her court, and sends out her knights, each on his 
special journey. The first gives us the trial of Holiness, 
in the person of the Red-Cross Knight, who wanders with 
Una (Truth), and encounters Duessa (Deceit) and Arch- 
imago (Giant and Paynim). The second is the trial of 
Temperance, in the hero Sir Guyon. The third presents 
Chastity; and Britomart, the Northern Athene, battles 
in steel. The last three paint Friendship, Justice, 
Courtesy. Each canto is thus a distinct work, but the 
same characters appear here and there, and Prince 
Arthur among them all. 

Such is the general plan of the allegory. But a second- 
ary meaning accompanies it ; and under the guise of 
these symbolic persons we have certain men and women, 
and events of his own time. Elizabeth is Gloriana and 
Belphcebe ; Sidney, Sir Calidore ; Raleigh, Timias ; 
Duessa, Rome ; and Una, the pure, struggling Church. It 
is plain enough, that we have in such a poem no exact 
unity, beyond the moral unity of the original idea. Yet 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. 10 1 

what could we want more? An earlier critic suggests 
that Spenser has sinned against the unities, and should 
never have intermingled real and allegorical characters. 
Another thinks the dress of the poem unsuited to the 
time, because holiness is not won by the lance, and 
chaste heroines do not wear plate armor. O rare critics ! 
most delicate, nice monster! Imagine such an interpreter 
under the shades of Strasburg minster, shaking his head 
at the chaos of arches and mingling tracery; for that, 
too, is an allegory in stone, as the " Faerie Queene " is a 
minster, rising dream-like, multiform, yet with the unity 
of one grand thought. It is the charm of the allegory 
that we lose ourselves in its magic, that its faces and 
forms cross each other, and we let the story carry us at 
its will. We do not ask the exact solution of its mys- 
tery. We are content to wander in Elfin land with 
Spenser, and only know that wherever we go, we are in 
the company of the twelve moral virtues. 

Let us now turn to the poem; and although we can 
gather only a few lumps of gold from this mine, let us so 
choose them as to learn the character of his genius. We 
must first glance at the form of his verse, since Spenser, 
above all our earlier poets, is the master of English 
rhythm in all its range of harmonious utterance. We have 
already seen that in the time of Surrey verse was en- 
riched by several new measures ; and the form which was 
chosen for the " Faerie Queene" is a yet richer addition. 
It is a new nine-line stanza with three rhymes, and closed 



102 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

by an Alexandrine : there are eight lines of ten syllables 
each. The interweaving of the rhymes gives a subtle 
unity to the stanza, and the closing line comes like the 
gathered crest and slow breaking of a tenth wave along 
the beach. It seems to my ear a greater triumph for our 
English verse than Dante's terza rima, because the Ital- 
ian is so much more flexible ; yet Spenser has made it the 
" nimble servitor," in Milton's phrase, of his fancy, and so 
Englished it, that Fletcher, Thomson, and Byron have 
kept the type. Sometimes, however, there is a lameness 
of rhyme, and the unwilling word is forced to obey the 
music. It should be noticed here that Spenser's use of 
many archaic words not only gives the antique coloring 
so suited to the poem, but a richer fulness. We meet 
with many phrases of Anglo-Norman romance, like 
chevisaiuice, amenaunce, but the body of his speech is old, 
hearty Saxon. There is not the same homely tongue we 
find in Chaucer ; sometimes an almost wanton wealth, 
sometimes an overwrought art of words, as in the many 
cases of alliteration. Yet even here he followed the 
very genius of the Saxon, for the first law of its poetry 
was in this echo of the letters, and his ear is more per- 
fect than even Milton's for the likeness of sense and 
sound. 

All sone the wound so wide and wonderous. 
Fiercely he flew upon the fickle fiend. 
And bowed his battered visor to his breast. 
With living blood he those characters wrote, 
Dredfully dropping from his dying hert. 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. IO3 

We may well say that no English poet has a greater 
mastery of all that is lofty, sweet, tender, bold, subtle, or 
weird in his own tongue. The " Faerie Queene " is to- 
day at once the most wonderful of paintings and of mu- 
sical compositions ; nor have we a poet who has done so 
much to ripen the language in this wealth of verse as 
Spenser did in that early time. 

But we must pass to higher traits than this of versifica- 
tion. I have already said that the chief difference be- 
tween him and Chaucer lay in the ideal spirit of his 
poetry, and as we see that in the allegorical type of his 
" Faerie Queene " we trace it in all the forms of its ex- 
pression. The power of Spenser is in his fancy. This is 
his realm. He is monarch of Elfin land ; we do not tread 
the earth of England or any other soil, but the world of 
his creation. It is not, however, that constructive imagi- 
nation belonging to an epic poet like Milton, that we find 
in our author. We are indebted to Coleridge for that 
philosophical view of the distinction between imagination 
and fancy, which has an illustration in the case before us. 
In the " Paradise Lost " there is that grand unity of idea 
which builds all the parts in just subordination to the 
whole, so that we never lose in the luxuriance of detail 
the oneness of the poem. There is this in Milton, in 
spite of his marvellous finished variety of scenes, the 
effect of an almost statuesque simplicity. 

But with Spenser, as with Tennyson, there is no such 
epic unity. We have in the " Faerie Queene " or the 



104 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

) 

" Idyls of the King," a series of pictures, a world of won- 
drous fancies, each perfect in its kind, yet in each we 
rather dwell on the rich imagery, the specific face or 
landscape, than the higher meaning. Yet if this compel 
us to give both Spenser and Tennyson a lower rank than 
that of a few monarchs of epic or dramatic poetry, still 
we must acknowledge the ideal powers of Spenser. None 
can surpass him in the endless creative life of invention, 
the prismatic play, the sudden changes, the blending of 
this magic of the fancy with all his pictures of nature or 
human character. We see this ideal tone in all his de- 
scriptions of natural scenery. Chaucer gives us the photo- 
graph of each tree, each castle, or fair meadow, so 
that you know he has taken his sketch as the sunlight 
does on the metallic plate. With Spenser there is no 
such plain copying ; his gardens and forest glens are 
transfigured in a " light that never was on sea or land." 
You feel that he was not a close observer, but a dreamy 
lover of nature ; you are not sure what the tree may 
be ; yet the ideal is after all the more perfect reality, 
and his fancy has only thrown over the landscape its 
purple glow, like that which you see, from the Hermit- 
age, hovering and sleeping over the Bay of Naples. 

We notice in Spenser what we seldom find elsewhere, 
except in Shelley and Tennyson, — the use of an image 
taken from the mental world to describe some natural 
object, rather than the opposite. Nature with him is at 
best the background of his ideal thought. 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. I05 

Here is a picture of Una. 

One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way, 

From her unhastie beast she did alight ; 

And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay 

In secrete shadow, far from all mens sight : 

From her fayre head her fillet she undight, 

And layd her stole aside. Her angels face, 

As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright, 

And made a sunshine in the shady place ; 
Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace. 

The Bower in the Idle Lake. 

It was a chosen plott of fertile land, 

Emongst wide waves sett, like a litle nest, 

As if it had by Natures cunning hand 

Bene choycely picked out from all the rest, 

And laid forth for ensample of the best : 

No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, 

No arborett with painted blossomes drest 

And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd 
To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smells al arownd. 

No tree, whose braunches did not bravely spring ; 
No braunch whereon a fine bird did not sitt ; 
No bird but did her shrill note sweetely sing ; 
No song but did containe a lovely ditt. 
Trees, braunches, birds, and songs were framed fitt 
For to allure fraile mind to carelesse ease : 

An Enchantress Asleep. 

And her faire eyes, sweet smyling in delight, 
Moystened their fierie beames, with which she thrild 
Fraile harts, yet quenched not ; like starry light, 
Which sparckling on the silent waves, does seeme more brigM. 

The Cave of Mammon. 

Both roofe, and floore, and walls were all of gold, 
But overgrowne with dust and old decay, 



106 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

And hid in darknes, that none could behold 
The hew thereof ; for vew of cherefull day 
Did never in that house it selfe display, 
But a faint shadow of uncertein light : 
Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away, 
Or as the Moone, cloathed in cloudy night, 
Does shew to him that walkes in f eare and sad affright. 

But this ideal tone of Spenser is equally well marked 
in his portraiture of character. It is through a world 
more wonderful than that of magic palaces and forests 
that we wander in the " Faerie Queene," — the world of 
all the passions, the lusts, the furies, and the graces of 
human life. All appear, canto on canto, in their beauty 
or ugliness; and the poet is master of every coloring, 
from the purity of Una to the arts of Duessa, the bright 
strength of Guyon to the loathsome form of Mammon or 
the cave of Despair. It is one pilgrimage we recognize 
through the " obscure wood," the gardens, and the dens 
of life ; our own battle with vice that passes before us in 
these preternatural shapes. There is always this moral 
power in Spenser. Yet we feel that he has not in his 
ideal portraiture of virtue and vice the real grasp of hu- 
man nature. There is nothing in him of that insight 
which belongs to the great dramatist. Shakespeare sees 
the heart of man with the same clear eyes as Chaucer saw 
the face of nature or social life ; and he gives us men, not 
personified virtues or vices. Othello is not jealousy, but 
a jealous lover; Macbeth is not remorse, but the human 
murderer in all the real phases of his guilt. It is here 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. IO7 

that we find the most striking defects in the poetry of 
Spenser. There is too much of the ethical abstraction 
of the pulpit, and too little of the real world of flesh and 
blood. You see it in his tendency to paint exaggerated, 
colossal forms of angel and fiend. It shows itself in his 
utter lack of humor. The power of the great dramatist 
or novelist lies in the quick eye for the tragi-comic in 
actual life, the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, 
the jostling of the crown and the fool's bauble, of wisdom 
and emptiness, mirth and tears. Don Quixote, the 
brave, crazy, but high-minded knight, imitating the feats 
of Amadis de Gaul, with Sancho, a comic type of the 
age of prose, embodies the soul of humor. Lear, again, 
does not make us laugh, yet his mad jokes give a strange 
foil to the fearful and the tender picture of the heart- 
broken king. But the grave fancy of Spenser can never 
stoop even to the reality of a jest. Nor is it merely the alle- 
gory that hampers him. Bunyan is " a fellow of infinite 
jest/' and the characters in the "Pilgrim's Progress" 
walk and talk, weep and laugh, are real saints and knaves 
and hypocrites. But in Spenser, as in Milton, there is a 
solemnity even in the effort at humor. His Braggadocio 
is a coward, whom we would kick, but could never laugh 
at, as at Falstaff ; and at times his description becomes 
merely nauseous, although " his very nauseousness is 
sublime." It is the same unreality of his fancy which 
leads to the mingling of all images, the goddesses of 
Greece, the elves and witches of Northern birth, Merlin 



108 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and the Paynims of the East, Tantalus and Pilate. That 
was, in part, the anachronism of that chaotic age, and we 
have a similar confusion in Shakespeare or Ariosto ; but 
Spenser goes beyond them. The girdle of Florimell is 
made by Vulcan, and worn already by the goddess of 
love. Artegall goes to the temple of Venus, and the 
British hero fights with Mahound. Yet if the poet has 
annihilated time and place, he has left a romantic chaos. 
We lose ourselves willingly in his mystery, as in those 
old pieces of mediaeval tapestry, where there is no begin- 
ning or ending, but a series of rich surprises, turbaned 
heads, knights in full armor, court, garden, and huntsmen 
and ladies, hawk on wrist, in the openings of the forest. 
He is a plagiarist, and we find in him Virgil, Tasso, Ari- 
osto, the Morte d' Arthure, all the romance of all time ; 
but, in the phrase of Dryden, " he invaded authors like a 
monarch, and what in others is theft, is in him victory." 
His spoils stand, like the marbles of all heathendom, 
gathered in Constantine's Santa Sophia, sustaining the 
noble dome, and dwarfed in the grandeur of the Christian 
building. 

There is one last thought, with which I would close 
this sketch of Spenser. It gives us the keynote of his 
power. We have seen that the " Faerie Queene " was 
only half of the work he designed ; yet, if a fragment, it 
has fulfilled that moral design, which he sought from first 
to last, to give the perfect portraiture of a Christian chiv- 
alry. This is its highest charm. It is the ideal of all the 



THE AGE OF SPENSER. IO9 

virtues, of faith, purity, honor, country, manhood. 
There is no poet who has left a more stainless page, who 
has been truer to his Christian ideal. If we seek the 
fairest pictures of manly nobleness or womanly love, of 
strength or grace, of brotherly friendship, of human ten- 
derness or divine holiness, we may turn everywhere to 
his writings. 

And here, then, we find the abiding power of Spenser. 
We may not have the taste for his long allegory that the 
readers of the court of Elizabeth had ; we may search 
vainly for the unities of person and scene, but this moral 
unity is the best key. If the inspiration of his poetry 
be caught, each random dip into his pages will discover 
some new beauty. 

For all that pleasing is to living ease, 

Is there consorted in one harmonie ; 

Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree. 

The age of chivalry is never gone while we love the 
poetry of Spenser. The stiff costume of the past, the 
euphuism of the court, the quaint ceremony are faded ; 
but so long as the soul of chivalry remain even in our 
age of prose, and a Christian faith remain, the " Faerie 
Queene " will live in our literature. And we can close 
with no more fitting words than those written of it by an 
American critic, that "he who at forty reads it again 
with the same pleasure as at twenty, is very sure to be a 
wise and happy man." 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 

It is not only as a curious study for the lovers of old 
English book lore, that we take up the beginnings of the 
drama in the age before the great master of the art, but 
because we cannot understand the genius of Shakespeare 
himself, unless we examine the soil in which it was 
nursed, and the ruder steps of its growth. 

" The drama, beyond all other forms of literature, is the 
fruit of a high degree of social culture. Early literature 
is epic or lyric, because it has more simplicity of thought 
and life. It is when it has reached its more complex 
development, the dramatic richness where ' all the 
world 's a stage,' that it is capable of the manifold play 
of thought, feeling, action, scene, which reappear in the 
mimic life of a Lear or a Wallenstein. We are not 
therefore to look on this art as if it rose at once to its 
highest stature in Shakespeare. We confess his un- 
shared genius. The ' Interlude of the Marriage of Wit 
and Wisdome,' * a primitive composition ' as Halliwell 
calls it, yet a good average play, had not been written 
twenty years when Shakespeare published several of his 
works. But it is still true that even Shakespeare was 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 1 1 

only the outcome of all that England had been and 
was. Hazlitt well said that ' he overlooks and com- 
mands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from 
the table-land of the age in which he lived.' And not 
only should we in this view study, as Hazlitt studied in 
his brilliant sketch, the contemporary dramatists of the 
Elizabethan time, but for the most faithful portrait of 
the mind, the manners, the tragi-comic elements of the 
English Middle Age, out of which the ripe drama came, 
we must go back to the yet earlier play. 

" The drama in England sprang directly out of the 
religious pageants of the Middle Age, the 'mysteries 
and miracle plays/ which were in use over all Europe. 
One of the strangest chapters of literary history is here 
opened to us. It is the fact that both the classic and 
the romantic drama were the offspring of religion. 

^Eschylus stands at the point where the popular shows 
held at the Grecian festivals and drawn out of the my- 
thology passed into classic form in the ' Prometheus.' 
We have a like growth in the Middle Age, that fantastic 
childhood of Europe, where, under the surface of a 
Catholic faith, were seething all the elements of thought 
and half-formed social character. There had risen in the 
Church a mythology as rich and strange as the heathen 
Pantheon. It had been long the custom on the great 
holy days, especially Easter and Whitsuntide, to repre- 
sent dramatically the scenes of history, Scripture, and 
the legends of saints ; nor, although some local councils 



1 1 2 ENGLISH LITER A TURE, 

had stopped the representations, and a few stern censors 
like William of Wadington had said that they were 

1 more for the honour of the Devil than God,' could 
they be suppressed. They were a sort of pictorial Bible, 
in which the child-mind of the people loved to read its 
religion. The earliest of these plays, now found, are 
French, and of the twelfth century ; but by the next 
century they became common over Europe. At first 
they were acted in churches by bands of monks; but 
soon on stages in the open air, where the huge crowd 
could gather, and where there was room for the heavenly 
and infernal persona, who played so large a part in these 
pieces, to rise and fall by the trap-doors. By and by these 
plays passed into the charge of the guilds or ' trades- 
unions/ of the Middle Age ; and without doubt some 
of the hard hits at ' Bysshape Cayaphas,' and popes 
in limbo, came from the growing scepticism of the 

' lewed folk ' in charge of the laic stage. In the 
Chester plays each new scene is called by the name of 
a guild : the three kings, the Mercers' play, the Passion, 
the Flechers', Bowyers', Coopers', and Stringers' play. 

"There are two classes: the 'mystery,' or dramatic 
paraphrase of the Old and New Testaments ; and the 

1 miracle play,' taken from the legends of the saints. In 
England, however, the mystery seems to have been some- 
times called a miracle play. Some of the English are 
borrowed from the French. Germany had rich treasures ; 
their last relic still survives in the famous Ober-Ammergau 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 113 

spectacle. In Spain this infant drama had the most hon- 
orable fate ; probably because no Protestant Reformation 
changed the popular taste ; but it ripened into the auto 
sacramentale, and the genius of Calderon raised it to the 
rank of Christian art. The mystery was suppressed at 
Madrid by the royal order no earlier than 1856. \ 

" But it is with the relics of the religious play in England 
that we have here to do. There are no richer remains to 
be found than those of the Towneley, Chester, and Cov- 
entry collections ; and any who have visited these old 
towns, still wearing such quaint traces of that very age, 
can readily call up the scenes of the drama. 

" The Coventry mysteries were the property of the fa- 
mous Grey Friars, and were shown at Corpus Christi. ' Be- 
fore the suppression of the monasteries,' says Dugdale, 
1 this city was very famous for its pageants. The thea- 
tres were large and high : and being placed on wheels, 
were drawn to all the eminent places, for the better ad- 
vantage of the spectators.' In many old writers we find 
allusions to them. In Chaucer's time they were not out 
of date, as appears, in his etching of Absalom." 

Sometime to shew his lightnesse and maistrie, 
He plaieth Herode on a scaffolde hie. 

In 1456 Queen Margaret was at Coventry, when she 
saw " alle the pagentes pleyde save domesdaye, which 
mighte not be pleyde for lak of day." Even as late as 
1575, " certain good-harted men of Coventree" had the 



1 14 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

honor of performing before Queen Elizabeth in the cele- 
brated entertainment at Kenilworth, and "gained con- 
siderable applause." And Heywood alludes to the devil 
as a famous character in the old Coventry mysteries — 

For as good happe wolde have it chaunce, 
Thys devyll and I were of olde acqueyntaunce, 
For oft, in the play of Corpus Christi, 
He hath played the devyll at Coventry. 

The costumes were in part conventional. Divine and 
saintly characters were distinguished by gilt hair and 
beards. The demons wore hideous heads ; the souls, ac- 
cording to their kind, black and white coats ; and the an- 
gels shone in gold skins and wings. Herod was clad as a 
Saracen. Masks were also used, at least in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, so that the whole performance 
must have borne considerable analogy to the rude Greek 
comedy in the days of Thespis. The extracts from old 
parish and town registers relating to these plays, show us 
what care was taken to give to such performances as 
much stage effect as possible. The stage was placed on 
a cart, and there were different partitions to represent 
heaven, earth, and hell. Very intricate machinery must 
have been used to produce different effects. We read of 
charges for coal to keep up hell fire, and that on one 
occasion hell itself took fire and was nearly burned down. 
In the book of accounts we find among the articles of ex- 
penditure : " Item, payd for mendyng hell mought, 
wdy "Item, payd for kepyng of fyer at hell mothe, 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 1 5 

l\d." ; and, " payd for settyng the world on fyer, 5^." 
Certainly a cheap bargain compared with our modern 
way of doing it. 

There was a chorus by way of prologue, in which sev- 
eral personages entered with banners, styled in the Cov- 
entry plays, Vexillator primus, secundus, etc., who sang by 
turns a description of the coming scenes. The play was 
in rhyme, sometimes, as in the Chester text, the eight- 
syllabled stanza, sometimes the long heroic, or the riding 
rhyme, a rough measure, yet with a Saxon strength and 
the alliteration belonging to the Saxon poetry. 

Nowe, gracious God, grounded of all goodnesse, 

As thy grete glorie no begynninge hadde, 
Succoure and save alle the, that syth and sese, 

And lysteneth oure talke, with sylence stille and sadde. 

We may now read a few extracts from these plays. 
There is the broadest range of subjects, from the crea- 
tion to the judgment day, and the strangest blending of 
devout faith, not seldom of poetic beauty, with the most 
irreverent humor. Let us begin with a Coventry mystery 
of the Creation. 

The introduction is quite striking, borrowed, doubtless, 
from the prologue of the Book of Job. 

The Almighty comes on the stage in person. 

Ego sum Alpha et Omega, principium et finis. 

My name is knowyn, Gode and Kynge, 

My werk for to make now wyl I wende, 
In myselfe resteth my reynenge 

It hath no gynning ne non ende. 



Il6 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

I am the trewe trenete, 

Here walking in this wone 
Thre personys myself I se, 

Lokyn in me God alone. 

Now wole I beggyne my werke to make 

Ffyrst I make hevyn with sterres of lyth, 
In myrth and joy evermore to wake, 

In hevyn I bylde aungelle fful bryth, 
My servaunts to be and for my sake, 

With myrth and melodie wourshipe my myth. 

Hie cantant angeli in cceli, " Tibi omnes angeli," etc. 

Now Lucifer enters and interrupts the song. 

To whos wourshipe synge ye this song? 

To wourshipe God or reverence me ? 
But ye me wourshipe ye do me wrong, 

For I am the wurthyest that evyr may be. 

Then comes a general dialogue between the good and 
bad angels, ending with the condemnation of Lucifer; 
and afterward God makes, in order, the world and its 
creatures. 

One of the most fantastic of these plays is that of 
" Noah's Floode." It seems to have been a favorite with 
the people, as it is alluded to in Chaucer, and the portrait 
of Madame Noah recognized as a good likeness of the 
wife of that day. 

" Hast thou not herd how saved was Noe, 
Whan that our Lord had warned him beforne, 
That al the world with water shuld be lorne?" 
" Yes," quod this carpenter, " ful yore ago." 
" Hast thou not herd/' quod Nicholas, " also 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 17 

The sorwe of Noewith his felawship, 
Or that he mighte get his wif to ship ? 
Him had be lever, I dare wel undertake, 
At thilke time, than all his wethers blake, 
That she had had a ship hire selfe alone." 

"I shall * wale a portion with judicious care ' lest I may 
seem irreverent, but we must not forget that without 
such oddities we can never understand the mind of the 
Middle Age. 

" God appears and announces the flood. 

I, God, that all this worlde hath wroughte 
Heaven and earith and all of naughte, 
I see my people in deede and thoughte 
Are sette fowle in synne. 
My ghoste shalle not linge in mone. 

" Noah now gives orders to enter the ark. All his sons 
with their wives answer in pleasant verse : one brings an 
axe, another the pitch. Noah's wife alone refuses to go, 
and he gives some very cynic criticism on the sex. 

Lorde ! that women be crabbed aye, 
And none are meke, I dare well say, 
That is well seen by me to-daye. 

" Now follows a catalogue of all the animals, sung by 
the family: when Noah renews his entreaty: 

Wiffe, come in ! why standes thou their ? 
Thou art ever forwarde, I dare well sueare. 

She. 

Yes, sir ! sette up youer saile, 
And row forth with eviil haille ; 



I 1 8 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

I will not oute of this towne ; 

But I have my gossipes everyechone 

They shall not drowne, by St. Johne ! 

He. 

Come in, wiffe, in twentye devilles waye 
Or elles stand their all daye ! 

Cam. 
Shall we all feche her in ? 

Noah.- 

Yes, Sonnes ! in Christes blessynge and myne ! 
I would you hied you be tyme, 
For of this flude I am in doubte. 

The Good Gossipes Song. 

The flude comes flittynge in full faste ; 

On every syde that spreades full farre 
For feare of drowning I am agaste, 

Good gossippes, let us drawe nere. 
There is a pottill of Malmsine good and stronge, 

It will rejoyce both harte and tonge, 
Tho' Noye thinke us never so longe 

Heare we will drink alike. 

" At last Madame Noah is pulled in by all the sons, the 
windows are shut, and the deluge rises/' Such comedy as 
this may seem almost unintelligible to us in a time of re- 
ligious belief. But in the first place, it is a mistake to 
think that those were times of great reverence. The re- 
ligion of the Church, while it kept its doctrinal and mys- 
tical side for the lettered, had, in accommodating its wor- 
ship to the vulgar, vulgarized its own character. There 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 19 

was no such feeling of delicacy in handling these subjects 
as with us. " We must remember, too, that much of the 
absurd in all this came from the ignorance of Bible lands 
and history and language It did not make men laugh 
to see Queen Esther clad in a huge hoop, or Abraham in 
a peaked beard and slashed doublet. All persons and 
places are jumbled together without any sense of the 
anachronism. Noah swears by St. John, and Herod by 
Mahound, Balaam's ass holds a scholastic argument with 
the prophet, and the rabbis in the temple talk church 
Latin. Yet amidst so much that is grotesque, there are 
passages of deep religious pathos, and even poetic beauty. 
In the ' Sacrifice of Isaac ' there is a rude yet tender 
dialogue between the son and the father." 

" Father, tell me of this case, 

Why you your sworde drawne have ? " 

" Izaak, sone, pease, I thee praie, 

Thou breakes my harte in twaie." 

" Would God my mother were here with me I 

She would knele downe upon her kne, 

Prayinge you, father, if yt maye be 

For to save my liffe." 

44 O ! coroely creatur, but I the kille, 

I grieve my God, and that ful ylle, 

I may not worke against his wille," 

44 Marye, father, God forbydde, 

But you doe your offerynge ! 

Gif you must doe Godes byddynge, 

Father, tell my mother for no thynge." 

44 My deare sonne Izaak, speke no more, 

Thy wordes make my harte full sore." 

" Father, I pray you hyde my eyne, 

That I see not the sworde so keyne, 

Youre stroke, father, I woulde not se, 

Leste I against yt grille." 



120 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

We have in the scenes from the New Testament the 
same blending of the devout with the grotesque. The An- 
nunciation, the Nativity, the Temptation, the Raising of 
Lazarus and the Crucifixion are dramatized. . The fine 
legend of the three kings is a favorite theme. Perhaps 
the scene on the hills of Bethlehem is as good an in- 
stance as any of the strange mixture of ideal and real. 
" The shepherds in this ' Bedlem mystery ' are not Arcad- 
ian minstrels, but talk the coarse dialect of English 
peasants. 

Heavy ale of Hatton I have, 

And whotte meats have I to my hier ; 
A puddinge may no man deprave, 

And a jannacke of Lancaster shire. 
Loe ! heares a sheepes heade sawsed in ale, 

And a grayne to laye on the greene, 
And sower mylke my wife hade ordened, 

A noble supper as well is seene. 

" Now follows the angels' song; the shepherds listen in 
wonder, and then walk to the manger. All adore the 
child, and as they go homeward lift up a new chant of 
praise. 

Brethren, let us all three 

Singinge walk whomwardes ; 
Unkinde will I in no case be, 

But preache ever that I can and crye, 
As Gabryll taught by his grace me, 

Singinge away hense will I. 

"In the 'Crucifixion,' a Coventry mystery, there is a 
very touching prayer of Mary at the cross: 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 121 

O my sone ! my sone ! my derlyng dere \ 

What have I defended the ? 
Thou hast spoken to alle tho that ben here 

And not a word thou spekyst to me ! 

To the Jewes thou art ful kende. 

Thou hast forgeve al here mysdede ; 
And the thef thou hast in mende, 

For onys haskyng mercy hefne is his mede. 

A ! my sovereyn Lord, why whylt thou not speke, 
To me that am thi modyr in peyn for thi wrong? 

A ! hert ! hert ! why whylt thou not breke ? 
That I were out of this sorwe so stronge ! 

Jesus 

A ! woman, woman, behold ther thi sone ! 
And thou Jon take her for thi modyr ! 

" One of the most striking pictures of the religious creed 
is the ' Harrowing of Hell.' The universal faith of that 
day was in the descent of Christ to free the worthies of 
the old dispensation. In the Chester play, Adam ap- 
pears, beholding a light, which, by the stage notice, is in- 
troduced in a ' cunning machine.' 

O Lorde and soveraigne Savyour, 
Our comforte and our counsceloure, 
Of this lighte thou art auctour, 
Me thou madeste, Lorde, of claye, 
And gave me Parradice in to plaie, 
But through my synne, the south to saie, 
Deprived was I therfroo. 

" Now enter Esayas, Simeon, Seith, David, all praising 
God. Presently Satan comes, seated in Cathedra, and the 
demons cry out : 



122 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Sir Sathanas, what man is he 

That shoulde thee prive of thy postie ? 

" Jesus now enters, with a huge noise sounding through 
the underworld. 

Open up hell gates anon, 
You princes of pyne everye eichone, 
That Godes sonne maie in gone, 
And the kinge of blisse. 

" After a quarrel Michael leads out the patriarchs and 
the pardoned thief, leaving Sathanas lamenting. 

Out alas ! nowe goes awaie 
All my prisoneres and my praie. 

"The * Anti-Christ and Domesdaye' throw much light 
on the fantastic religion of the time. Anti-Christ appears 
sitting on a throne, writing chapters from prophecy to 
confirm his Messiahship. The kings come before him ; he 
does miracles, descends to the grave, and rises again ; and 
then having received homage, distributes the kingdoms 
of the earth. 

I am vereye God of mighte, 
Sonne and mone, daie and nighte, 
To blesse I maie you bringe ; 
And the giftes that I beheighte, 
You shall have as is good righte: 
To thee I geve Lombardye, 
And to thee Denmarke & Hongarye, 
And take thou Ponthous and Italye, 
And Rome yt shalbe thyne. 

"Next Enoch and Elias enter, and confront Anti-Christ. 
They demand his proofs ; two dead men rise, and are 

J 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 23 

convicted of being counterfeits. Anti-Christ kills the 
two prophets ; at last Michael comes, and two demons 
bear off the pretender. 

" But the wildest of all is the ' Domesdaye ' in the Ches- 
ter plays. God summons his angels, and gives them 
trumpets. The dead rise ; first come a pardoned pope, 
an emperor, and a queen ; after them a condemned pope, 
an emperor, a jurist, and a merchant, bewailing their fate. 
Christ appears in clouds, angels around him with his 
cross, thorny crown, spear and nails. 

" The pope's lament recalls Dante. 

Now bootless is to aske mercye, 

For livinge higheste in eairth was I, 

And cuninge chosen in cleargye, 

Also silver and symoneye 

Made me pope unworthye, 

That bornes me nowe full witterlye, 

For of blesse I am full bare. 

Alas ! why spende I wronge my witte, 

Harde and hotte nowe feele I it, 

Of sorowe must I never be shutte, 

Nowe helpes no praier. 

" Some may think such rude work unworthy a place in 
literary annals. Yet if we are studying the growth of 
the literary mind, these pieces are of great interest in 
giving us the elements of the more polished poetry of 
later days, as a naturalist finds the diamond sleeping in 
the carbon. We have seen in these rough mysteries 
some features of imagination and tender feeling: beyond 
this there is one characteristic which shows us the very 



124 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

origin of the English drama. Tragi-comedy (although 
the artificial rules of former days called it barbarous) is, 
in the plays of Shakespeare, the noblest type of dramatic 
expression ; because it makes the stage a complete pict- 
ure of human life. In its representation of grandeur 
and littleness, the noble passions and the base smiles and 
tears, the king and the king's jester, it is capable of dis- 
playing the largest range of character. Sophocles could 
not have written a play like Lear ; for the modern world 
is more varied than his in its complex range of action, 
its lights and shades, its contrasts of social humanity. 

Now, it is this tragi-comic feature which is stamped on 
the early religious drama. It grew out of the very life 
of the Middle Age. We can only understand it by sup- 
posing that under the grave surface of the ecclesiastical 
life all the new ideas, the latent doubt, the smothered 
freedom, the social fancy, found their only vent in bub- 
bling out through these humors of art. The strange 
mingling of the grotesque with the most sacred of things 
cannot be overlooked. You see in the cathedral, amidst 
the carved saints, a grinning head, or, as in the porch at 
Rheims, a new-risen body with its head in its hand, or 
the dwarfs squatting on the columns of the side chapel 
at Lincoln, or the apes staring from the Antwerp pulpit. 
There is the same grim humor in the frescoes of Orcagna 
in the Campo Santo, in the ' Dance of Death,' and in a 
hundred forms of painting and poetry. 

In like way the tragi-comedy of England grew, in its 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 25 

time, from these mysteries ; and as the great dramatic 
age flowered so soon after in the reign of Elizabeth, 
Shakespeare cast his work in this vital form. This carica- 
ture of Scripture, this odd jumble of angel and fiend, 
Herod and the shepherds, Noah and Noah's roystering 
wife, is the crude germ of that tragi-comic genius which 
could draw Prospero and Caliban, Othello and Bottom. 

"But there is another aspect from which those quaint 
relics deserve our thought. It is natural enough, that 
one modern Prynnes should turn away with devout dis- 
gust from such gross superstition. But we must not 
forget that we are to judge those strange products by the 
canons of time and place. Tyrwhitt, in a thoughtful 
essay on Ober-Ammergau and the Symbolic Christianity, 1 
compares the Passion play with the mosaics of Ravenna. 
In a day when there was no Bible society, the rich 
Byzantine pictures and the ' mysteries ' were the illu- 
minated Bible of the people, and although mixed with 
legend and gross in expression, we cannot doubt their 
good intent in spite of all their irreverence. It is pre- 
cisely here that we learn their worth to us as a most 
faithful portrait of the past. We shall certainly find no 
better antidote to the still worse superstitions of our 
mole-eyed churchmen, who sigh after those * ages of 
faith.' We cannot even reproduce the art or poetry. 
Our scholars, like Longfellow, who tried in his ' Divine 
Tragedy ' to restore an ideal . copy of the ' mystery,' 

1 Contemporary Review, 1871. 



126 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

can only produce a curious grotesque. The Passion play 
at Ober-Ammergau,has been so toned down in the hands 
of managers at Munich, that it is no more than a tame, 
over-refined phantom of the original. If we would know 
what the Christian mythology was that swayed the mind 
of the Middle Age, we shall read it far better in this litera- 
ture of the people, than in the octavos of Latin Chris- 
tianity, and better yet than in the ideal treatises of 
Roman and Anglo-Catholic divines. In this fantastic 
world crowding the stage of Coventry, in Herod and his 
knights, Bishop Cayaphas, the doctor and the begging 
friar, we study the wrinkles and gray hair of that decay- 
ing time. The old faith in priestly power and pagan 
fancies, and the new thought, the half-whispered doubt, 
are seething together in the brain of the people ; and we 
perceive the need of a Reformation which gave them 
instead of a dramatic legend the English Bible and the 
truth of Christ. 

" From this point we can pass clearly to the next step 
in the development of the drama. It has the same strik- 
ing interest as directly linked it with social history. The 
old pageants died out with the growth of the Reforma- 
tion ; and although here and there traces of them linger, 
after Elizabeth they are hardly heard of. But in place 
of the Scriptural or saintly legend, appears the quaintest 
type of the allegorical play, called the " Morality." Its 
earliest examples date from the eve of the Reformation ; 
and it must have been a favorite with the court in the 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. \2J 

day of Sir Thomas More. It was still a fashion among 
the people in the time of James, although supplanted 
among the gentle by the nobler poetry. The ' Morality ' 
was a satirical comedy. All the virtues and vices : wis- 
om, truthfulness, temperance, folly, hypocrisy, wanton- 
ness, strut on the stage and mouth their dark sayings. 

" It is a curious question, how such plays grew out of 
the social state of that time. We have seen that the mys- 
tery and miracle play naturally faded away, when the 
gross mythology of the Church lost its hold on the peo- 
ple. When the Bible of Wyclif and Tyndale was read in 
cottage as well as hall, there was left no taste for such 
caricature. There followed a time of stern criticism, and 
the stage took its part as the vehicle of the popular 
satire. The growing dislike of prelate and monk vented 
itself in the keenest humor. But the stage was not yet 
capable of real comedy ; the form of allegory or fable 
was just fitted to the intellectual fancy of the crowd. 
We might compare an English audience of that time 
with the Greek, who laughed at seeing the wisdom of 
even a Socrates turned into fun, or the frogs croaking 
their satire at the bidding of their comedian. But the 
likeness is closer between the literature of the time and 
this grotesque ' Morality.' We have seen in our study 
of Spenser, what a common feature the allegory was of 
all writing. But it was specially as the form of religious 
or social satire it was then chosen. The Reformation 
was in its earlier stage ; it had enlisted most of the sharp 



1 2 8 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

wit as well as the religious fervor ; but a too open attack 
was still dangerous in a day when the satirist's ears might 
be nailed up for a fling at archbishop or noble, and there- 
fore the stern Protestant humor, most dangerous in its 
jesting mood, revelled in the allegory. The satirist chose 
this form as his mask ; and more than all, the stage in its 
' Moralities ' became the foremost teacher. It drew the 
personages of the day as a school-boy draws Master 
Birch on his slate, but in dread of the rod forbears to 
write the name, and only chalks some portentous figure 
with huge spectacles and stiff cravat ; so the actor ap- 
peared as Pride with * an unbridled stomach,' and the 
larger school-boy knew it meant Wolsey ; he put bigotry 
in a friar's gown, and Gospell Libertee in a plain plough- 
man's smock, and the sermon was as telling as one of 
Latimer's at Paul's Cross." 

We have from the literary scraps of the time the 
names of several of the favorite plays, as the " Four Ps," 
" Dives and Lazarus," " Hit Nail o' th' Head," " Lusty 
Juventus," " The Marriage of Wit and Wisdome." The 
following specimen of the style is from the last-named 
play. Its full title is : " The contract of a manage be- 
tweene wit and wisdome, very frutefull and mixed full 
of pleasant mirth as well for the beholders as the hearers 
and readers." The characters are Idleness, Wantonness, 
Fancy, Dolle, Severity, Irksomeness, Snatch, Honest 
Recreation, Indulgence, Wisdome, Mother Bee, Witt, 
Search, Inquisition, Good Nurture, Catch, Lob. Its 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 29 

date is 1579. Severity and Indulgence appear, and 
talk of marrying their son Wit to Wisdome. Wit goes 
in search of her, but on his way meets with Idleness, 
who calls himself Honest Recreation, and after falling 
into many hard adventures with Wantonness and other 
vices, is at last rescued. The play is in a rambling rhyme, | 
sometimes doggerel, but with much comic effect. Idle- 
ness, the vice or buffoon introduces himself : 

A, sirra, my masters ! 

How fare you at' this blessed day ? 

What, I wen, all this company 

Are come to see a play. 

What lackest the, good fellow, 

Didst the nere se man before ? 

Here is gasing ! I 'm the best man in the company, 

"Where there is no more. 

My name is Idlenes, the flower 

Of the frying-pan ! 

I am always troubled with the litherlurden, 

I love so to linger ; 

I am so lasy, the mosse groweth an 

Inch thick on the top of my finger ! 

In his disguise as a French doctor and as a priest there 
are good touches of English humor. 

Ah ! by Got, me be the Doctor, 
Me have the excellent medicine 
For the blaines and blister. 
Ah ! me am the knave 
To give the fair maid the glister ! 

The clergy of that day are well touched in this 
verse : 



I30 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

I am of that condition 
That I cane turne unto all 
Coullers like the commillion,- 
Although some doe refuse me, 
And some leden-heeled 
Lubber will not refraine me, 
And when men hath done with me, 
Women will retaine me ! 

It may seem a crude time, when scholars like Sir 
Thomas More could be amused with comedy like this. 
But after all, there was more robust sense and reality of 
character with all the long-spun allegory than in much of 
the pointless farce of later days ; and spite of its coarse- 
ness, its morality was always noble, by the side of the 
best in the unclean comedy of the Caroline time. One 
more example will show us the transition from the 
" Morality " to the historic play. It is the " Kynge 
Johan " of Bishop Bale, written about 1540. Bale was a 
strong Protestant, and to defend the Reformation he put 
the popular story of King John into drama. The play 
has no poetic merit at all, although here and there are 
passages of strong satire ; but in it there are mingled 
the real characters of that past age : John, Pope Innocent, 
Pandulphus, Stephen Langton, and the allegorical per- 
sons, Sedition, the Vice, a jester, nobility, clergy, Civil 
Order, Treason, England as a widow, and Imperial Maj- 
esty. There is no unity of place or time ; the pope ap- 
pears in person in a scene on English ground, and seven 
years elapse between the papal interdict in the earlier 
part of the play and the submission of John. The king 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 13 I 

comes forward in the opening scene as the most virtuous 
of monarchs, who designs 

By practyse and by stodye 
To reforme the lawes and sett men in good order, 
That trew justice may be had in every border. 

Widow England then presents her cause against the 
clergy : 

For they are the trees that God dyd never plant, 

And as Christ dothe saye, blynd leaders of the blynd, 

Suche lubbers as hathe dysgysed heads in their hoodes, 

Which in ydelnes do lyve by other menns goodes, 

Monks, chanons, and nones in dyvers coloure and shappe, 

Both whyght, blacke, and pyed, God send their increase yll happe. 

Sedycyon enters, and claims the right of the Church 
over nobility and clergy. 

King Johan. 
Why giveth he no credence to Christes holy gospell? 

Sedycyon. 

No, ser, by the messe, but he calleth them heretickes, 

That preche the Gospell, and sedyycyous scysmatyckes, 

He tache them, vex them, from prison to prison he turne them, 

Heindygeth them, juge them, and in conclusyon he burne them. 

Sedycyon goes out presently to dress for Syvyll 
Order. 

Nobility, clergy, and Syvyll Order have a long quarrel 
with the king, which seems to end in submission to him ; 
but Dissymulation enters syngyng of the litany, and lays 



I3 2 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

a plot with Private Wealth and Usurped Power. At last 
it is agreed to excommunicate John. The Pope appears 
with Langton and Pandulphus, and proclaims : 

For as much as Kyng Johan doth Holy Church so handle, 
Here do I curse hym, wyth crosse, boke, bell, and candle. 

The Primus Actus closes with a speech by the Inter- 
pretour, a dignified and dull epilogue. The Second Part 
gives us, in the same style, the submission of John, his 
supposed death by poison, the death of Sedycyon the 
poisoner, and the restoration of the kingdom by Imperial 
Majesty, who pronounces the true doctrine of royal su- 
premacy against all " Anticristes whelpes," the Papistes, 
and Anabaptistes " with their subtle allegoryes." 

" We can understand clearly, in this transition form of 
the early drama, how the historic and the ideal play of 
the Shakespearian time arose. It was out of the 
1 Morality,' as artistic culture increased, that a real 
tragedy and comedy were to come. The shadowy virt- 
ues and vices vanished, and in their stead an Edward 
Second walked in the sounding lines of Marlowe ; yet as 
we saw in the ' mystery ' the germ of the tragi-comedy, 
so here we see the moral power, the grave humor, the 
insight into character, the English robustness that make 
the later drama a home-born product. It is curious to 
find traces of this rude play even in Shakespeare, who 
gives the comic ghost of the old Vice, a jester with his 
long coat and dagger of lath." 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 33 

We are here, at last, on the border line of the Eliza- 
bethan drama. It is but a few years to the birth of its 
great master. We need not pause at the names that 
complete this period. Our purpose has been fulfilled if 
we have seen these steps of the historic growth. The fame 
of " Gammer Gurton's Needle," and " Ralph Royster Doy- 
ster," which is still older (1 5 5 1), are not worth quoting, save 
as a transition to more regular comedy. John Heywood, 
the king's jester, in his " Four Ps," has left some biting 
satire, which gives us an idea of the popular fun over the 
superstitions of the time. The earliest regular tragedy 
yet found is the Gorboduc of Sackville. It is, however, 
a stiff, academic piece, made by classic rule, with nothing 
either of English freedom or early extravagance to give 
it a place in the drama which foreshadows the age of 
Shakespeare. 

We come now to a host of playwrights. The " Span- 
ish Tragedy " of Kyd is a mass of incredible bombast. 
The " David and Bethsabe " of Poole is a confection of 
bad sugar. We have the most comic proof, however, of 
the speedy growth of the art out of this ranting style in 
the plays of Shakespeare, who puts into the mouth of 
Ancient Pistol many of these sounding lines of the older 
tragedy. 

Die men like dogs, 

Merry Tricks, 1611. 

Feed and be fat, my fair Calipolis. 

The Battle of Alcazar. 



1 34 ENGLISH L1TERA TURE. 

abridge my doleful days ! 

Why then, let grievous, ghastly gaping wounds 
Untwine the Sisters Three ! Come, Atropos, I say. 

King Henry IV, 2d Part. 

But what may boote to stay the Sisters Three ! 
When Atropos perforce will cut the thred, 
The doleful day was come when you might see. 

Mirrour for Magistrates. 

But in Marlowe we begin to see the must of the frothy 
vat working into the sound wine. There is still a vast 
deal of the rhodomontade which is so deliciously mocked 
by Shakespeare in his own words. 

Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia. 

Very few of his plays are not surcharged with this 
" parlous stuff." /Vet we find here and there grand pas- 
sages, which confirm Ben Jonson's praise of Marlowe's 
" mighty line." His Dr. Faustus, with all its faults, has 
the traits of that sombre, sceptical genius. The artistic 
form of Marlowe is far inferior to that of Goethe ; yet 
he finds in the old story the same haunting riddle of the 
knowledge of good and evil. 

Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin 

To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess : 

Bene disserere est finis Logices. 

Is to dispute well, Logic's chiefest end ? 

Affords this art no greater miracle ? 

Then read no more ; thou hast attained that end. 

Bid Economy farewell : and Galen come. 

Be a physician, Faustus, heap up gold, 

And be eterniz'd for some wondrous cure. 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 35 

Why, Faustus : hast thou not attained that end! 

Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man. 

Couldst thou make man but live eternally, 

Or being dead raise men to life again, 

Then this profession were to be esteem'd. 

Physic, farewell. Where is Justinian ? 

Si una eademque res legatur duobus, &°c. 

A pretty case of paltry legacies. 

This study fits a mercenary drudge. 

When all is done, Divinity is best. 

Jerome's Bible, Faustus : view it well. 

Stipendium peccati mors est ; ha! Stipendium, <5rV. 

What doctrine call you this ? Che sera sera ; 

What will be shall be. Divinity, adieu ! 

These Metaphysics of Magicians, 

And necromantic books, are heavenly. 

Aye, these are those that Faustus most desires. 

All things that move between.the quiet poles 

Shall be at my command. Emperors and kings 

Are but obey'd in their several provinces : 

But his dominion that exceeds in this, 

Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man : 

A sound Magician is a Demigod. 

Shall I make Spirits fetch me what I please ? 

Perform what desperate enterprise I will ? 

I '11 have them fly to India for gold, 

Ransack the ocean for the orient pearl, 

And search all corners of the new-found world 

For pleasjvnt fruits and princely delicates. 

But the great praise of Marlowe is to have been the 
first English writer of the regular historic tragedy. It is 
in his " Edward II," when he leaves the borrowed fancies, 
the Tamburlanes and Moors, to tread English ground, 
that for the first time he leaves his mock sublimities, and 
gives us simple, natural, grand poetry. It is here that we 
have the true growth of the English drama. 



136 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Edw. Leister, if gentle words might comfort me, 

Thy speeches long ago had eas'd my sorrows ; 

The griefs of private men are soon allay'd, 

But not of kings. The forest deer being struck, 

Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds ; 

But when the imperial lion's flesh is gored, 

He rends and tears it with his wrathful paw, 

And highly scorning that the lowly earth 

Should drink his blood, mounts up to th' air. 
Lei. My lord, why waste you thus the time away? 

They stay your answer, will you yield your crown ? 
Edw. Ah, Leister, weigh how hardly I can brook 

To lose my crown and kingdom without cause ; 

But what the heav'ns appoint, I must obey. 

Here, take my crown ; the life of Edward too ; 

Two kings in England cannot reign at once — 

But stay awhile, let me be king till night, 

That I may gaze upon this glittering crown, 

So shall my eyes receive their last content. 

Continue ever, thou celestial sun ; 

Let never silent night possess this clime , 

Stand still, you watches of the element ; 

That Edward may be still fair England's king. 

We reach now the threshold of the Shakespearian 
time. With Marlowe the true model of the English play 
began to take the place of these raw playwrights, and 
there appears a group of artists who deserve our notice. 

Thomas Heywood, Dekker, Chapman, Marston, and 
Webster are the noblest of these. Marston and Webster 
were poets of rare tragic genius, and they often have pas- 
sages of lofty fancy, of dark or tender passion, which are 
" preludings " of Shakespeare. But they, too, often draw 
unnatural characters and scenes that shock the taste ; they 
mistake the horrible for the sublime too readily, and love 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 1 37 

" White Devils" and " Insatiate Countesses" too well for 
great dramatic art. The foulness of Marston's fancy is 
often loathsome, even to a critic without squeamishness. 
It is still a long step in development, if not in time, from 
him to the ideal tragedy of Hamlet or Othello ; to mistake 
these " preludings " for his music is like the blunder of 
the Siamese amateur at the opera, who thanked the or- 
chestra on the tuning of their instruments. But when 
the Elizabethan writers, instead of hunting on Italian 
soil for colossal villains, tyrants, and feminine devils, draw 
for us the men and women of their own land, they draw 
genuine and moving pictures. To my homely taste 
the historic play and the comedy are the best work of 
that time. There are, especially in some of the dramas 
of Dekker and Thomas Heywood, portraitures never 
surpassed even by Shakespeare himself. Indeed it is 
here far more, in my view, than in the more startling 
tragedies that we shall find the true progress of the art. 
"The Woman Killed by Kindness" is one of the most 
touching in its portraiture of the noble heart of the wrong- 
ed husband and the penitence of the dying Mrs. Frank- 
ford. The " Eastward Hoe " of Marston is far beyond 
any of his stilted tragedies, and freer than the others of 
wanton offences against decent speech. And it is in the 
reality of the best of these early English plays that we 
find their real superiority to those of the after age of 
Charles. The fashionable comedy of Congreve and 
Wycherly does not present the genuine picture of Eng- 



1 38 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 

lish life, but the life of a witty court and a licentious 
time. 

We need not excuse the coarseness of too much of the 
Elizabethan drama, even in Shakespeare. But though it 
was coarse, the stage was not essentially corrupt. It 
painted the rude manners, the unpurged speech of the 
"lewed folk," the vices of the courtier; but it loved to 
paint also the Christian manhood, the chastity of woman, 
the triumph of virtue, the saintliness of true religion. 
Its guise was often repulsive, but its heart was clean. 

It is but a passing sketch we have made of the early 
drama. If, however, we have gained from it some idea 
of the steps of its growth, the knowledge will be of aid in 
a study of the most striking chapter in English literature. 
It may be accepted as a chief article in the critical faith 
of our time, that the modern romantic drama is the 
noblest product of literary art. And it is one of those 
strange facts of criticism, that for a long time this verdict 
was delayed. England as well as France worshiped the 
classic model. The artificial taste of all the oracles, down 
to Boileau and Voltaire, pronounced the plays of Shakes- 
peare a semi-barbarous violation of the principles of 
dramatic poetry. We owe to German genius, to Schlegel 
and to Goethe, the appreciation of the great English mas- 
ter. No one now ventures to deny the rank of Macbeth, 
Lear, Othello, Hamlet. And since the profound criticisms 
of Ulrici, the artistic analysis of Goethe, and others, it is 
seen that the cause of this grandeur of the Shakespearian 



THE ENGLISH- DRAMA. 1 39 

drama lies in the very change from the conception and 
the structure of the classic play. We have already noted 
this in our study of the tragi-comic feature of the " mys- 
tery " ; we may now glance at the whole case as it is linked 
with this history. The strict division between tragedy 
and comedy, the simplicity of the plot, the small num- 
ber of actors on the stage, the unity of place and time, 
were in accordance with the simplicity of all early life. 
The Shakespearian stage, as it represents a far wider 
and more complex social life, required a greater freedom 
in each of these features. Its type is not so severe, but 
it is far richer. The difference is analogous to that in all 
branches of art. The ancient music was in unison, ours 
is in harmony. The Greek was perfect in sculpture, in 
pure form, but incapable of the deeper and more sug- 
gestive expression of painting. And thus in the drama 
there is a many-sided life, not to be shut within the classic 
unities. It is the tragi-comedy of life, that Shakespeare 
gives us, blending its grave and gay ; there is somewhat 
for mirth in the most solemn scenes, somewhat of grand- 
eur in its common, every-day humanity. Only this char- 
acter of his art could bring out the universality of his 
genius. All the noblest drama has followed him. We 
notice in Schiller, that in his earlier manner we have 
the pure tragedy ; but in Wallenstein he draws the rude 
humor of the soldiers by the camp fire, yet the grand, 
solitary spirit of the Duke, and the sad fate of Thekla. 
Such a work required a larger number of dramatis per sonce, 



140 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

a more life-like shifting of scenes ; it required, too, varie- 
ty of place and time. We need not defend all the in- 
congruities found even in Shakespeare, but if the effects 
of the drama are an illusion, it is difficult to show why 
we should not be allowed to pass as in a dream from 
London to Bosworth Field, or to forget months as well as 
minutes. 

Now in this fact of the growth of the Shakespearian 
drama out of the character of modern life, we have the 
link between him and this history. Shakespeare did not 
invent these peculiar features. He found them all ready. 
It was his work to take the rich but crude material, and 
shape it to perfection. We do not rob him in this of a jot of 
his supreme power ; but rather this is his power, that he 
was no copier, like Racine or Alfieri, of any classic model, 
but he drew directly from English real life, and therefore 
wrought into his own web all these bold and novel 
features which had sprung out of the natural dramatic 
liberties of early time. Every one of the new elements 
of his great plays we have traced in that early literature. 
We have not only the tragi-comedy, but the immense 
variety of characters, the fantastic shifting of scenes, the 
rapid changes of time and place. There was, of course, 
a defiance of all rule in some of them. In the " myste- 
ries " God and man blend in the dialogue, and in the 
" moralities," real persons and abstract personifications 
jest or scold together. In " Kynge Johan " we leap over 
seven years. In Heywood's " Fair Maid of the West," 



THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 141 

one scene is laid in an English inn ; and presently we 
find ourselves in the court of Mullisheg, the mighty king 
of Fez. But the materials of the freest, richest power 
were here, and it only needed a master to shape them. 
It is precisely at this point of English development that 
the age of Shakespeare comes. 

And thus we learn why England was capable of it, and 
why she gave in that early time the finest model of the 
European drama. Italy with the Renaissance was fettered 
by a classic past. France had no grand period of na- 
tional letters till long after the Reformation, and then 
the reign of an artificial school made her incapable of 
more than the polished copy of the Greek by Racine. 
Germany was forced to wait long for Lessing and 
Goethe and Schiller. But in England the whole intel- 
lectual movement, which ripened with Elizabeth's time, 
came when the national brain was yet fresh, original, un- 
fettered by precedent ; and the dramatic genius caught 
all this reality of English life, all the fermentation, the 
extravagance, but with it the humor, the fancy, the 
courtly wit and the homely speech, the household man- 
ners and the historic grandeur of the time. Had the 
stage waited for a great master till the day of Charles or 
Anne, it would never have risen higher than the inflated 
heroics of Dryden, or the cold grace of Addison. Its 
happy lot was to have such a dramatist, and a group of 
dramatists at the hour when they knew no school be- 
yond English history and the real life of their time. 



I4 2 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

And here, in conclusion, we have what will always give 
us the true interest in this early drama. Even as a 
purely literary study it is full of curions hints to a 
scholar who loves to trace in such relics the living 
growth of a people. But of the study we have made, be 
what it should, it will be more than a literary criticism. 
We shall read in these sketches of English passion and 
English humor a truer history than in Hume or Ma- 
caulay. We shall perceive the shifting scenes of the 
vast drama which the nation played through its long 
childhood ; the tragi-comedy enacted in the palace and 
the cottage, at the banquet and on the scaffold, where 
king and bishop, scholar and yeoman, had their parts, 
and left their memories in this most living chapter of 
English letters. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ENGLISH PROSE. 

OUR way has lain hitherto amidst the fair fields of 
English poetry ; we now turn to the great masters of its 
prose. It is not merely for entertainment with the 
drama and the lyric that we left in the background the 
graver writers of history, divinity, and " divine philoso- 
phy," but because we follow the sequence of literary 
growth. Prose literature is always the fruit of a later 
culture, and, indeed, in any day a classic history or essay 
is rarer than a poem. The chief reason is that poetry is 
the first, natural utterance in which genius expresses its 
thoughts ; history is epic, and philosophy, the lofty 
intuition of a Pythagoras or a Simonides. Prose, in- 
deed, may rise to the fullest poetic height ; but ordina- 
rily it is only the vehicle of common life and thought. 
But when science and history and philosophy are devel- 
oped with the larger culture of a people, then they 
demand a fitting language ; and thus out of the rude 
talk of men come the varied, subtle, and expressive 
speech .of the scholar and the man of science. As an art, 
poetry, indeed, is as truly as prose the fruit of this riper 
study ; but there may be and is a virgin age of song, which 

143 



144 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

breathes the first inspirations of genius ; while prose can 
have no such earlier season of beauty, but must be devel- 
oped by slow, careful steps. Poetry springs like the 
tropic flower in a moment out of the glowing soil ; prose 
is the bloom of a colder intellectual climate. 

It is the mountain streams that feed 
The fair green plain's amenities . 

This striking fact is found in all literary history. An 
" Iliad " precedes by ages the work of a Thucydides and a 
Plato. Chaucer gave English verse its classic beginning, 
a century before Sir Thomas More our first classic in 
prose. It is for this reason that before the great age of 
Elizabeth we have but a scanty list of writers whose 
names are worth our thought. There were, indeed, 
books and bookmakers ; but they were either scholars, 
who wrote in Latin, or the rude sermons of the parish 
priest. An English prose was not yet ripe. But it will 
be of interest to us to trace even these early steps ; not 
only to recall here and there a now neglected work, but 
more because we may see how the noble tongue was 
framed which became " the large utterance of the early 
gods," and recorded the thought of a Bacon and a 
Raleigh. 

What a theme, indeed, for a scholar is this of the 
growth of a language ! to open the pages of the " De 
Augmentis," where invention and wit and learning seem 
to have found such perfect utterance, or the " Fairie 



ENGLISH PROSE. 1 45 

Queene," where the verse like the colors of Rubens pours 
itself out lavishly in gorgeous fancy, in excess of beauty ; 
then to go back to the banks of the Elbe or the rough 
shores of Britain to hear it as it was spoken by a Hen- 
gist in those short ringing monosyllables fit only for the 
battle-field ; and then to imagine what centuries of men-, 
tal and moral change must have passed between ; how 
words at first expressing some rude conception had been 
repeated from lip to lip, and refined, and placed in new 
combinations ; how a harsh and crabbed word has be- 
come sweet as Apollo's lute ; a sound that for the Saxon 
meant only a sensuous thing, has become refined till it 
conveys the subtlest thought of philosophy. 

An Alfred musing on divine things in a rude day 
struggled to convey some new thought, until the effort 
created the word ; and in this eternal generation the 
spirit of a people has gone forward, shaping and mould- 
ing its elements, inserting in its stock the grafts of other 
tongues, until at length we have the English of to-day. 

In these earlier studies we have gained some idea of 
the sources of our English literature, and of the peculiar 
changes which the tongue underwent in its passage to 
the English of a classic day. There was a proper classic 
age of Saxon prose in the age of Alfred ; meagre, in- 
deed, and rude, yet important as marking an epoch. But 
from the decline of the Saxon power the language was 
passing through that great process of fusion with the 
French. No true English prose thenceforward is written 



I46 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

until the fourteenth century, and before that time we 
find a writer only here and there. Hitherto all works of 
history and divinity had been written in Latin. 

There was no standard in English. The dialect of the 
court was a piebald of fashionable Anglo-French. The 
law employed that strange composite of French and Mid- 
dle-Age Latin, which we yet read in the statutes of the 
ancient realm. No writer who affected nicety of literary 
merit would descend to the " volgare " of common life. 
It is curious to notice here as in Italy, how slowly the 
scholar learned the riches of his mother-tongue. Even 
More wrote his " Utopia " in Latin. 

It is'at this point that the first germs of English prose 
appear. Chaucer in several compositions made that 
prose melodious : as in his " Testament of Love," and 
" Tale of Melibeus." Fortescue ennobled the language 
with his treatise on " Monarchy." The printing-press of 
Caxton opened to England that exhaustless fund of 
translations from the French : the " History of Geoffrey," 
the " Golden Legend of Saints," the " Morte d' Arthure," 
and the " Book of Chivalry." 

As yet, indeed, there was no master-work in history, in 
essay, in any sphere of letters. But we see in the move- 
ment the English language struggling into full articulate 
expression. 

The first great work which was the fruit of that past 
and the promise of the future, is More's historic frag- 
ment. But a little before this is one work, the very first 



ENGLISH PROSE. 1 47 

prose of our language, which I name, both for its date, 
and because it has a curious interest for us as the great 
wonder-book of that first age of travel. It is the richest 
curiosity shop of all the legends and fables of the East, 
brought by the early pilgrims. Sir John Maundeville set 
out from England in 1322, and wrote his " Travels " in 
1356, in Norman-French. It was translated into Latin 
and Italian, but the English version is his own after-work.. 
The great name of Wyclif appears in 1350. It opens at 
once the Protestant Reformation and the new age of let- 
ters. The birth of religious freedom demanded the free 
word. And it is, indeed, a striking fact that the same 
movement which kindled the mind of England supplied; 
its instrument Not the scholar but the people gave it 
utterance. The Reformation could have been nothing 
without the Scripture ; and this again had no power in 
its Latin cere-cloths. It must speak to all ; and it chose 
the Saxon. 

And thus, again, the homely speech became the oracle 
of God ; it gained a classic grandeur from the very 
thoughts it uttered, and rose at once to be the language 
of England. Already, indeed, there had been before 
translations of this and that portion of the New Testa- 
ment into English ; but they were in manuscript, and 
little known. Wyclif s translation became the standard 
speech. It is rude, indeed, but its value is not in its 
nicety of translation, although for its day it was the 
work of a master in learning. It teaches that letters 
themselves spring from a nobler root. 



I48 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

And next follows the first real classic of English prose, 
Sir Thomas More's " History of Richard III." It still re- 
mains a model of strong, clear, scholarly English. But it 
marks an epoch also. 

The new learning of Italy began to influence the 
scholars of the island, a riper culture appeared, and from 
this point the names begin to multiply through the 
reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. 

We need not linger in them. Cranmer and Gardiner, 
Barlow and others in theology. Foxe and Holinshed in 
history, or Sir J. Cheke and Roger Ascham. To us .at 
this day they seem of little worth, but we must not for- 
get that they did much for letters. To Cheke and Smith 
learning is indebted for its noblest growth. Ascham's 
" Scholemaster " is a piece of homely, clear English. 

And now the language had reached that point when it 
becomes at last fitted to be the vehicle of a literature; 
and as we have seen the growth of our early prose, we 
have now before us another and a most captivating view 
of our subject. It is as the proper preface to the great 
masters who follow that I speak of the general features 
of this English tongue in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. What made it so great, so rich, so much 
superior to the emasculated writing of a later time? 
Why does it draw the scholar, not as an antiquary, but 
as a lover of beauty, away from Addison or Hume to the 
music of Taylor or Sidney? 

If we would name the features, good and bad, which 



ENGLISH PROSE. I49 

mark that culminating literary period, — and we should 
not forget its faults, — we should give the first place to 
the fresh and overflowing strength of its thought. For 
it surely is the highest canon of criticism, that the style 
of any age is not to be considered as independent from its 
material. It is when literature becomes predominantly 
an art, and busies itself, above all things with style, 
that we trace the first step in degeneracy. There is in 
this, as in architecture, a Doric period, when the outward 
form is nothing more than the severe expression of the 
spirit ; and a later Corinthian, when the luxuriance of 
the acanthus leaf overruns the pure lines of form, and 
we feel that the age seeks beauty in preference to truth. 
And so with the elder literature ; while it has far less of 
the finished grace of a later day, it is the writing of men 
who were so full of fresh thought that beneath all the 
stiffness and rudeness of style we see the power of the 
original English mind. The historian began for the first 
time to weave the materials of English annals. The 
theologian handled the most earnest questions of the 
Christian faith. It is amazing to see what a ponderous 
mass of learning is given us in those books of every 
sort. 

All the treasures of scholarship are brought forth and 
poured out in their writing, and with earnest, thorough, 
and indefatigable labor. There is not a great work which 
is not exhaustive in its richness. We have had much 
new discovery since in many lines of science and of criti- 



150 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

cism, but the English people have had few such giants of 
learning. Where is the writer in polity since Hooker ? 
where the work that takes the place of Field ? where such 
a coronal of learned gems as in the " De Augmentis " ? 
Latimer cannot preach a sermon at Paul's Cross, or 
Donne before the king, or Sir Thomas Browne or Burton 
write an essay, but it bristles with rare learning. Their 
works remind us of conquerors who exhibit in their 
triumph all the spoils of war. 

It is this fulness that makes at once the vice and 
charm of their style. The defect of almost all of them 
is over-elaboration, seeming pedantry of learning. We 
cannot call this pedantry a merit ; it was the sign of an 
unripe taste. But we must remember that to them this 
classic learning was an intoxication ; it was not pedantry 
for them, but the newly awakened love of all past wis- 
dom. And their scholarship was solid and thorough. 
In them it implies no want of intellectual power. But 
we wonder more at the muscle which wields, like the 
heavy plate-armor of the Crusader, all this learning. 
We are entertained by it as in some baronial hall hung 
with the iron trophies of war ; not as in a modern dining- 
room, among the more tasteful refinements of our day. 

If I am not mistaken, the Greek was then more culti- 
vated than in after-days, when the Latin tongue became 
the model of every scholar, from the prize poet to Gib- 
bon, Bolingbroke, and Johnson. This age produced the 
readers of Plato and of Aristotle : scholars who can sel- 



ENGLISH PROSE. 15 I 

dom be matched unless in modern Germany ; and I 
think the fact explains to a great degree that more life- 
like and original vein so marked in their noblest writing. 
For the Greek was the language of a people who did not 
borrow as the Roman borrowed, but whose thought 
sprang out of the fresh mind and the independent life. 
We pass here more directly to the English style of the 
seventeenth century. The first great feature to be 
marked is the predominance of Saxon words and Saxon 
idiom. I do not mean by this that there was no mixture 
of classic phrase ; on the contrary there may be found in 
these writers much, in this regard, that we should call 
pedantic ; many words that have not since been natural- 
ized, and forms of expression that are uncouth and semi- 
barbarous. There was no exact and nice taste. But 
any one who opens the page of Sidney, of Raleigh, of 
More, of Taylor, will be struck with the vast proportion 
of home-born words ; and paradox though it be, we may 
venture to say, that even in Sir Thomas Browne there is 
more of rich, strong, nervous English than in Steele or 
Tillotson. 

The spirit of that day was yet near its fountain-head. 
There are instances of this on every hand. The noblest 
example is given in that translation of the Bible, which 
to this day, like that of Luther, remains unsurpassed. 
The Bishops' Bible, of which we have still the remains in 
our Psalter, is a yet finer proof of this Saxon power. 

It may be said without exaggeration that our English 



1 5 2 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

Bible has been the book as well of the scholar as of the 
" lewed folk " ; has not only inspired the faith, but has 
been the great classic of our mother-speech, Nor must 
we pass by in this connection that Book of Common 
Prayer, which we cannot read without feeling that the 
inspiration of the holy word breathes in its pages and 
offices. We notice with what care the compilers, learned 
divines, yet home-born Englishmen, combined in it the 
dialect of the scholar with that of the people. 

It is the Saxon element that gives their peculiar rich- 
ness to the writers of this age. With every language, 
the nearer we are to the sources, the nearer we are to 
what makes the poetic power, the words that photograph 
the image of living objects, as they were when first used. 
But this poetic power is yet more striking in the Saxon, 
which abounds in those words that incarnate the strength 
and beauty, the manly thought, the warm feeling, of this 
great race. 

There is thus a striking affinity between the poetry 
and the prose dialect of the seventeenth century. In 
this respect we have an advantage over the classic 
tongues in the fact that our poetry is measured by 
accent and not by quantity. In the Latin the law of 
quantity excluded many of the words of prose from use 
in poetry. But with us, as accent imposes no such re- 
striction, the language of prose or verse is of equal scope. 
We often praise, and with reason, the great superiority 
of the classic rhythm in other respects. Yet we may 



ENGLISH PROSE. 1 53 

hold the chief reason of the poetic character of our 
prose to lie deeper still, in the Saxon genius itself. 
When we praise this poetic feature of this early writing, 
we mean no mere fanciful or fluid grace ; but all that 
gives strength to language, its bone and muscle, as well 
as its fresh hue and childlike form ; that gives the power 
of a Rembrandt to a page of Clarendon, or in a sentence 
of Bacon the essence of long modern essays. In this 
regard, therefore, we must always prize this English prose. 
We may find more eloquence of dialect, more refinement 
of words, a larger and fuller vocabulary in later days, 
but we must go back to them for the home-born speech. 
We may hold it the sign of a sure decay in culture when a 
people lose their native dialect ; and there are few more 
marked proofs of the half education which we are get- 
ting in America than this. A Yorkshire man will often 
recall to you in his rough homespun talk the English of 
Raleigh ; but a New Englander comes out of his com- 
mon school with a conversation made up of all the 
largest centipedal words in Webster; never a good, 
homely, telling monosyllable. Indeed it is here the 
mark of a scholar to talk in simple English, and of the 
people in Latin derivations. A peddler will always 
" negotiate," instead of buy or sell ; and I heard a lad, a 
day since, telling another on the way to his skating to 
take a less " circuitous route." 

Let us now turn to another feature of English prose, — 
the construction of the sentence. It is the general modern 



154 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

idea that the syntax of the old writers is rude, clumsy, 
and unnatural ; and even many who love them well will 
admit this. The long, tortuous sentences of Taylor or of 
Milton weary our ears ; we prefer the brief, well-rounded, 
epigrammatic phrase of Macaulay. Doubtless there is a 
defect here in the prose of the seventeenth century. It 
is very often, in the best, cumbrous and involved so as to 
darken the sense as well as to destroy the unity of ex- 
pression. Syntax is always a later elaboration. But 
there are two points to be noted, which for a genuine 
lover of the English may make it doubtful whether our 
gain is not alike a loss. The first is the ancient order 
of the sentence. The present position of the noun, just 
before the verb, is a form borrowed from the French, a 
language of different syntactical genius from the Saxon. 
But the earlier Saxon involution seems more accordant 
with the genius of the language, and however often 
weakened, it as often gives a wonderful force and poetic 
beauty. But, again, the long sentence, tedious as it is in 
many hands, is with a genius like Milton or Hooker most 
fitted to bring out the stately rhythm of our language. 
Rhyme is not necessary to constitute verse with us, as 
in the French. The grandest of our poetic forms, the 
blank verse, is a rhythmical prose ; and in the highest 
prose there is a rhythmus, a harmonious flow and cadence, 
appealing to the poetic ear, and making the difference 
between a barrister's brief and the eloquence of a Burke. 
This rhythmic quality of our Saxon tongue demands the 



ENGLISH PROSE. I 55 

long sentence. But our late style, in avoiding this earlier 
cumbrousness, has gone to excess in disjointed and arti- 
ficial neatness. We can take no better instance than 
Macaulay. His sentences are all epigrams. " There is 
no union between them," to use the phrase of Coleridge, 
" more than of marbles in a bag, each round, hard, and 
glittering." But this, so far from a true style, is surely a 
bad one ; not only because it spoils rhythm, but because 
it destroys all natural expression ; it leads the writer to 
be hunting at every moment for an antithesis, a witty 
turn, and to sacrifice for a brilliant touch the truth of 
history or character. Morality and literary taste are 
more akin than we suppose. We turn with delight from 
this poor staccato of a Macaulay to the music of those 
old writers, even though it be over-stately, to those ma- 
jestic sentences of Milton or Hooker, rising, clause on 
clause, in a volume of growing music, the development 
of the main thought sustained by other related thoughts 
that express many moods, and in a voice now strong, 
now soft and plaintive, until it bursts on us in a final har- 
mony like the chorus of a cathedral anthem. 

Having studied the features of English prose as it 
grew in the seventeenth century, we can understand its 
power as the expression of the English mind, and the 
manifold forms of literature in which it was embodied, 
which arose because they were fitted to its genius. It 
was a language whose roots and trunk were Saxon, 
which had grafted upon it many derivations from French 



1 5^ ENGLISH LITERA TURE 

and from the classic learning ; but it had incorporated 
them into itself, without greatly changing the native 
stock. The Saxon had given it strength, solidity, poetic 
beauty ; the French had contributed range of diction, 
colloquial ease, and elegance ; the Latin, the sonorous 
and lofty diction of the schools. It was a tongue which 
suited the character of the people, massive, weighty, rich, 
yet flexible. In poetry its stately line could sustain the 
march of Shakespeare, and the wing of Milton at heaven's 
gate ; yet it was capable of the lightest madrigal of 
Surrey. In prose, whatever was grave, solid, deep, and 
rich had its natural utterance. These characteristics 
both guided its path, and appear in each classic depart- 
ment of our English prose. The history may be named 
first. It grew out of the statesmanlike genius of Eng- 
land, her regulated liberty, her solid, practical intellect. 
More opened its literature with his powerful fragment of 
Edward and Richard. Bacon in his " Henry VII " gave 
the model of a clear, solid, sagacious criticism ; and Clar- 
endon closed the period with a history which remains, 
whatever its faults, the model of such writing, to this 
day. History is the specialty of England ; not the 
subtle learning of a Niebuhr, but the practical history, 
dignified by the moral tone of a Christian state, as in Dr. 
Arnold's writings. The English pulpit exhibits the 
same character, from the homely fervor of a Latimer to 
the scholarly sense of a Sanderson ; it always uses a 
sonorous, grave, effective eloquence, but it seldom rises 
to the impassioned power of a Bossuet. 



ENGLISH PROSE. 1 57 

In philosophy it has little speculative power. The 
language has not the subtlety of the Greek or modern 
German ; and it is as impossible to translate Plato into 
it, as into the Latin, which stands over against the text 
of an Ast or of a Bekker like a Russian hut opposite a 
palace. Even Cudworth could not mould it, or Cole- 
ridge naturalize reason and understanding, perception, 
and conception ; but the stubborn practical genius re- 
fuses to admit such niceties of thought. But within the 
English range of practical and social ethics, it is a lan- 
guage of power. And the English essay, as in Bacon, is 
natural and " to the manor born." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 

ItJs significant that the first name of our classic Eng- 
lish prose is that of Richard Hooker. For it proves that 
" Theology is not only the queen and witness of all wis- 
dom, but that it ministers the nourishment and life of 
that literature, which most men think the idle pastime of 
the mind " ; and, more nearly to our subject, " that thus 
our English mind hath been fed from these deeper 
sources, and thereby gained the stately thought and de- 
vout heart which mark that golden prime of the seven- 
teenth century." 

Though we leave the delectable mountains of drama 
and epic, we are not led into the dry waste of homiletics 
when we propose to bring before us the greatest of the 
names which have immortalized the pulpit. It were not 
easy to name all of these giants of learning and power, 
who have upheld the Church against Pope and Puritan, 
and who cannot be forgotten by the historian. But ours 
is a more genial task, to choose the selecter few who 
stand beside Spenser and Raleigh and Milton, a Hooker, 
an Andrewes, a Hall, a Donne, and best beloved of all — 
Jeremy Taylor. 

158 



ELIZA BE THAN DIVINES. 1 5 9 

These writers form a family group in which each mem- 
ber differs from another ; yet they are alike in the grand 
features that make the type of old English divinity. 
The same profound theology, the same reverent heart, 
the same saintly expression, are found in this, the fairest 
type beyond that of Geneva or of Rome, which a Chris- 
tian land has produced. In the pages of a Walton, the 
poems of a Herbert, the rich treasures remain to us 
which we study here. 

Let us glance, at the outset, at the influence of English 
theology on its letters, and there see the characteristics 
of that age. And first, that wondrous age which bloomed 
under Elizabeth sprang out of the Reformation. Relig- 
ious ideas in England then, as in the noblest epochs of 
all lands, first awakened the national mind, which had 
slept long in superstition ; and the impulse given by that 
spiritual life communicated itself to every branch of 
science and letters, as the wave which washes one spot 
breaks at the same time along the shore. The Bible of 
Wyclif opened the mother-tongue. The truth uttered 
by Latimer ripened in the after-age ; and without this, 
no Bacon had given new laws to science, and no Spenser 
had painted the wandering of Una and the arts of 
Duessa. 

In all the earlier essays of literature, in " Piers Plow- 
man," in the drama, even in Chaucer himself we see this 
fermentation of the popular thought. 

It is impossible to read the literature of this great cent- 



l6o ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

ury, without perceiving, in comparison with the belles- 
lettres of the age of Anne, the colder spirit, the loose 
morality, the* literary idleness of the later time. It is the 
difference between an age of elegant leisure and one of 
earnest thought. The grave sentiment of a Daniel and a 
Marvell, the devout humor of a Browne, the large pro- 
portion of religious poetry, like Herbert's and Wither's, 
all show that literature had not become mere art. And 
hence we find often a common quality in the divines and 
the men of letters ; we have the drama in Latimer, and 
sermons in Shakespeare. In a later day the pulpit grew 
less vital, and the poetry less religious. When, with 
Charles and Gallic license, the heart of religious faith 
died out, the literature of the seventeenth century died 
also. 

And hence we feel the immense influence of these 
divines on that literature. The pulpit in after years 
waxed cold, as it became the representative of a settled 
Protestantism : the tame eloquence of Stillingfleet, the 
half-sanctified wit of South, and the learned stateliness 
of Barrow succeeded to the earnest eloquence of the 
elder fathers. But then the pulpit was a burning as well 
as a shining light ; its teachers were men in the very van 
of the religious conflict ; their vast erudition, their theo- 
logical discourse were weapons, not hung in the armory, 
but worn night and day ; and an English people read 
and listened, because both were animated with the same 
faith. It was a day when even the courtier was a student 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. l6l 

of theology, a day of serious-minded, Christian men. Sir 
Henry Wotton read Bellarmine, while mingling in the 
gaieties of an Italian court. 

We turn now to the characteristics of that old English 
divinity. It was an age of polemics, and the Christianity 
of the whole period took mainly that direction. The, 
later time had not yet come, when the vital questions of 
theology had become matters of indifference, and the 
Church put forth only treatises on the " External Evi- 
dences of Christianity," or on " Natural Theology," and 
the cold morality of a Paley. There was a living faith 
with Churchman and Puritan. The question on one hand 
was with a dexterous Bellarmine, a Fisher, or the priests 
of Roman pretension ; and on the other with a Cart- 
wright and a Travers. That English Reformation was at 
its beginning a protest against Rome, but not, as on the 
Continent, the impulse of here and there an individual 
mind ; it was the organic, collective life of the Church ; 
and therefore, in the words of Jewel, " it took the pat- 
tern of reforming religion from whence the ground of 
religion was first taken : the Church of the Apostles, and 
old Catholic Fathers." And hence its theology embod- 
ied this spirit. The Reformation of the Continent crys- 
tallized around the notions of a Luther or a Calvin ; it 
became only the embodied shape of their own intellect — 
fiery, strong, but one-sided, angular, distorted. Scouting 
all authority, the Protestant was as malignant against a 
church window or a surplice as against the mass. He 



1 62 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

forged the links of his logic until in its fetters Christi- 
anity became a " Quinquarticular " controversy. In their 
zeal for the doctrines of election and irresistible grace, 
men forgot the ethical side of religion, while, in the words 
of a clever Italian, "the women and shopkeepers were 
able to judge of Predestination, and the most ignorant 
of the common people were mad for a super- or re-Ref- 
ormation of Religion, like the man who would not cease 
to whet and whet his knife till there was no steel to 
make it useful." 

But it was not so with the English Church. Although 
thoroughly Protestant, it had within itself larger, more 
harmonious, more genial elements. It kept alive a rev- 
erence for a Christian Past, for sacred learning, and for 
the beauty of a Christian art. It held a moderate 
theology, a wiser and larger charity. 

When the Calvinist urged that the admittance of the 
notion of merit excluded the Romanist from the pos- 
sibility of salvation, Hooker, while he clearly defined 
Justification, said : " Let me die, if it be ever proved that 
simply an error doth exclude Pope or Cardinal utterly 
from hope of life." 

It pursued that practical tone which never forgot in 
speculative questions the faith that maketh by love the 
relations of outward duty. The living heart of its pulpit 
spake in that stately sermon of Cudworth : " We have 
no warrant in Scripture to peep into these hidden rolls 
and volumes of eternity, and make it our first thing that 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 63 

we do, when we come to Christ, to spell out our names 
in the stars, and to persuade ourselves that we are cer- 
tainly elected to everlasting happiness, before we see the 
image of God in righteousness and true holiness, shaped 
in our hearts." 

There is a difference, in some regards, between the ear- 
lier divines, as Cranmer, Jewel, Rogers, and their suc- 
cessors of Elizabeth and James. The first Reformers 
were more Calvinistic in their opinions, friendlier to the 
teachers of the Continent: while later, the separating 
lines were more clearly drawn. We hear Bishop Jewel 
writing to Peter Martyr as " my Father," and Grindal, in 
1568, to Bega and to Bullinger: " Commend both us and 
our ministry to the Lord in your prayers " ; but it must 
be remembered that at the outset both were busy with 
the same strife against Rome. It was only when that 
strife was over, and Calvinism began to carry out its 
logical and theological spirit, against all moderate faith, 
all reverent worship, that this first alliance was broken. 
This is the only true solution of the fact. It is false to 
assume that the English Church as a body changed its 
divinity or its church principles. We grant readily that 
there were ultra Calvinists then as now, and an extreme 
right of Churchmen, as Laud. But in the main the 
theology of the Church has been the same. Nothing 
can be more marked than the contrast between the 
great Nonconformist writers, even to Home and Bax- 
ter, and those of whom we speak. The spiritual power, 



164 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

the eloquence and piety of the former are saturated 
with Calvinism. But with the latter, that wise spirit 
which joined freedom of thought to the metaphys- 
ics of Christian doctrine, kept the balance between Cal- 
vin and Arminius, and held the minds of men to the 
plain duties of piety. The ethical tone, so marked in 
the English pulpit, as in Barrow and Butler, is seen in the 
spirit of our Articles as well as in the sermons of all these 
great men. 

We turn to another striking point — the devotional 
character of that literature. It is the most beautiful 
trait of that day, that amidst all the stir and strife of 
controversy, such treasures of meditative piety remain, — 
books of prayer, holy lyrics, manuals of self-discipline. 
Scattered amidst folios of polemics or treatises of divinity 
we find them wherever we look ; and we turn back with 
a feeling of surprise at the barrenness of our time to the 
devotions of Andrewes, to the meditations of Hall, and 
the "Holy Living and Dying" of Taylor. There is a saintly 
fervor in them ; a rich glow not only of expression, but 
of thought, that marks them as coming from the very 
heart of that English time. This tone is distinct from 
the devotional writing of the Puritan ; less self-conscious, 
less gloomy, it is the devotion of calm, still, lowly minds ; 
while, on the other hand, it is distinct from the proper 
type of Romish asceticism, from the cloistered, ghostly 
meditation of a Kempis, or the ecstasies of Francois de 
Sales. There is about it the quiet beauty of an English 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 65 

rural parsonage ; a holiness, deep as that of the recluse, 
but which has grown in the sweet relations of home life, 
which knows the cares and joys of the heart, and has 
mingled with the world while above it. We know noth- 
ing fairer than that old English type of religion. We 
learn the power of that age, when we see its intellectual 
strength mingled with such a spirit. We turn in that 
most exquisite of books, the "Lives" of Walton, to the 
picture of Hooker, when after his battles with Travers, 
he resigns the mastership of the Temple, and goes to his 
little parish, " where I may study and pray for God's 
blessing upon my endeavors, and keep myself in peace 
and privacy, and behold God's blessing spring out of my 
mother-earth, and eat my bread without opposition " ; 
we see Sanderson, the greatest of casuists, living forty 
years in Boothby Pannell, studying and fulfilling his pas- 
toral duties, so bashful that he could not lift his eyes 
from his sermon, which "happy infirmity" proved so 
" like the radical moisture in man's body, that it pre- 
served the life of virtue in his soul"; or Herbert, the 
nobleman and scholar, a country parson in the sweet re- 
treat of Bemerton, kneeling in his empty church at his 
prayers, and " composing divine Hymns which he set and 
sang to his lute or viol," and a daily angel at the sick- 
bed or in the cottage of the poor. This was the heart 
that produced that steadfast strength of the English 
Church. 

But I must hasten to speak of the style of that old 



1 66 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

English prose, and here I know well that I shall find 
many who will hold me little else than a worshiper of a 
clumsy Elizabethan architecture. But I do not for a 
moment deny the faults of that prose. The cumbrous 
sentence, the overloading of classic and Patristic learning, 
the mixture of quaint conceits, are evident enough. But 
surely to allow these to hide from us the nobler features 
would be false ; a very shallow criticism is enough to dis- 
close the surface defects, as the critical cobbler could 
find mistakes in the sandal of the statue, but could not 
see the godlike beauty of the face. Perhaps, however, 
if we examine the higher qualities we may see the faults 
diminish. 

We should notice first, the fulness, the overflowing 
strength of that English divinity. It is the writing of 
men who are so fully charged with the thoughts of the 
great subjects that they handled, that they pour into the 
least channel the whole tide of their learning and their 
logic. When we open those books we are amazed at 
their riches, the treasures hid in the sand of the driest 
theology. Since then we have had much discovery in 
every field of Scriptural criticism and doctrinal truth ; 
but no age has such learning. The pulpit of that time 
gives us the best features of the English Church. In 
later days it became more refined and more academic ; 
but the stateliness of Barrow, the tame eloquence of 
Tillotson, do not give it such power over us. In the 
earlier time it spoke in the tongue of the people. The 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 67 

sermon was no rhetorical essay on some general topic of 
morality, or scrap of Christian sentiment; it handled 
questions that concerned the very life of the Church and 
the nation. If we look on those discourses as tedious 
and dull, it is because we do not put ourselves into the 
place of the hearers. These sermons expressed the very 
fulness of those rich brains, in which not a subtle 
analogy, not a glowing thought was lost. They were 
often pedantic and cumbrous, and yet compared with 
those of a later day, they have much more of plain and 
pungent expression. There is no finer English. The 
tongue of a grave, solid, rich, strong mind found its 
noblest utterance in the pulpit, with every variety from 
the homely power of a Latimer to the sustained music 
of a Taylor ; in all, a sonorous, mighty eloquence. In 
their writing is that hearty, home-born Saxon which be- 
longs to the early prose. It is by no means pure ; on 
the contrary they have, as " great learned clerkes," a 
large proportion of foreign, half-naturalized words ; but 
yet there are no sources of genuine English richer than 
our divines. Their speech was near the fountain-head. 
And here we have the secret of that poetic power which 
we see in them. If we take up Hooker on " Justifica- 
tion," or Donne, and compare their pages at random 
with Tillotson or Sherlock, we may note the strength of 
those Saxon words, the happy choice of a single phrase, 
the richness of a home-bred idiom. 

There are two great periods which we may distinguish 



1 68 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

in these early divines. The first extends through the 
age of Henry VIII and Edward VI; the second, from 
Elizabeth to the Revolution. The age of Henry and 
Edward has left a host of worthies ; but it was a time 
too busy with the immediate strifes of the Church for the 
literary culture of an after-day. Jewel may exhibit the 
character of its scholarly learning, and Latimer the 
homely preacher, who spoke the burning Gospel to king 
and artisan. 

Jewel : " Apology." — The Popish Authority. 

They will say to this, I guess, civil princes have learned 
to govern a commonwealth and to order matters of war, 
but they understand not the secret mysteries of relig- 
ion. If that be so, what, I pray you, is the Pope, at 
this day, other than a monarch or a prince? or what be 
the cardinals, who must be no other nowadays but 
princes and kings' sons? What be they else at this 
present in the Pope's kingdom but worklikely princes, 
but dukes and earls, gorgeously accompanied with bands 
of men, whithersoever they go ; oftentimes also gaily 
arrayed with chains and collars of gold ? They have at 
times, too, certain ornaments by themselves, as crosses, 
pillows, hats, mitres, and palls ; which pomp the ancient 
Bishops, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Ambrose never 
had. Setting these things aside, what teach they? what 
say they ? what do they ? how live they — I say not as 
may become a bishop, but as may become a Christian 
man ? Is it so great a matter to have a vain title, or by 
changing a garment only, to have the name of a Bishop ? 

Why, I pray you, may Caiaphas and Annas understand 
these matters, and may not David and Esekias do the 
same ? 

C. 16, 17. For tho' we have departed from that 
church, which these men call Catholic, and by these 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES- 1 69 

means get us envy amongst them that want skill to 
judge, yet is this enough for us, that we have gone from 
that church which had power to err ; which Christ, who 
cannot err, told so long before ; and which we ourselves 
did evidently see with our own eyes to have gone both 
from the holy Fathers, and from the Apostles, and from 
Christ his own self; and from the Primitive and Catholic 
Church ; and we are come, as near as we possibly could, 
to the Church of the Apostles and of the old Catholic 
Bishops and Fathers. For we thought it meet to take 
the pattern of reforming religion, from whence the ground 
of religion was first taken ; as with the ancient Father 
Tertullian : " Look, whatsoever was first, that is pure ; 
and whatsoever is latter, that is corrupt." Why return 
we not to the pattern of the old churches ? Why may we 
not hear amongst us at this time the same saying, which 
was freely pronounced in times past in the Council of 
Nice, with so many Bishops and Catholic fathers, and 
nobody once speaking against it "" * * that is to say, 
hold still the old customs ? When Esdras went about to 
repair the ruins of the Temple of God, he went not to 
Ephesus, although the most beautiful and gorgeous 
temple of Diana was there ; and when he proposed to 
restore the sacrifices and ceremonies of God, he went not 
to Rome, although peradventure he had heard that in 
that place were the solemn sacrifices called Hecatombse 
and others, and Numa Pompilius' ceremonial books ; he 
thought it enough to follow the pattern of the old 
Temple. 

Peter, Old and New. 

Tell us, hath the Pope alone succeeded Peter? and 
wherein, I pray you ? in what religion? in what office? 
in what piece of his life hath he succeeded him ? What 
one thing (tell me) had Peter ever like unto the Pope, or 
the Pope like unto Peter ? Except peradventure they 
will say thus : that Peter, when he was at Rome, never 
taught the gospel, never fed the flock, took away the 
keys of the kingdom of heaven, sate him down only in 



I ;o ENGLISH tlTERA TURE. 

his castle in S. John Lateran, and pointed out with his 
finger all the places of purgatory ; or that he gave order 
to say masses in every corner; or that he mumbled up the 
holy service with a low voice, and in an unknown lan- 
guage ; and that he hanged up the sacrament in every 
temple and on every altar, and carried the same about 
before him whithersoever he went, upon an ambling 
jennet, with lights and bells ; and that he consecrated 
with his holy breath oil, wax, wood, bells, chalices, 
churches, and altars; and that he sold jubilees, graces, 
liberties, palls, * * * indulgences and pardons, * * * 
and that he called himself by the name of head of the 
church, Bishop of Bishops, alone most holy; or took on 
him the right over other folks' churches ; or that he main- 
tained wars; or that he, sitting in his chair, with his triple 
crown full of labels, with sumptuous gorgeousness, with 
his royal sceptre, with the diadem of gold, and glittering 
with stones, was carried about, not on a palfrey, but on 
the shoulders of men. These things, no doubt,' did Peter 
at Rome in times past, and left them in charge to his 
successors, as you would say, from hand to hand ; for 
these things be nowadays done at Rome by the popes, 
and be so done, as though nothing else ought to be done. 

And now listen to Latimer, and hear what the Church 
of England spake in the day when her clergy were 

— no Sabbath, drawlers of old saws 
Distilled from some worm-cankered homily, 
But spurred at heart with fiercest energy 
To embattail and to wall about their cause 
With iron-worded proof. 

We imagine him as he is described on his trial before 
the Bishop of London. 

Master Latimer, having a kerchief on his head, and a 
great cap, such as townsmen use, with two broad flaps to 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. I^I 

button under his chin, wearing an old thread-bare Bristol 
frieze gown girded to his body with a penny leather gir- 
dle, at the which hanged by a long string of leather his 
Testament ; and his spectacles, without case, depending 
about his neck upon his breast. 

There is in him an extreme homeliness ; often an even 
coarser vein, yet oftener the simple power of true elo- 
quence ; never affectation, never rant, never the rancid 
diatribe of a Spurgeon, but the power that moves the 
heart of men. He would not suit a fashionable modern 
church, but we must not so measure him. 

Sermon o?t St. John Evangelist's Day. 
Luke ii, 8-12. 

" And there were shepherds abiding in the field and 
watching their flock by night." 

I shewed you yesterday, right worshipful, what was 
the occasion that Mary, the mother of Christ, came to 
Bethlehem ; where it was prophesied he should be born. 

The occasion was this, Octavius, being emperor over 
that great empire of Rome at that time, when Christ 
should be born, sent out a general proclamation that all 
countries underneath his dominion should be taxed. Now 
God intended another thing. Octavius sought but to 
fill his purse and make money ; but God sought occasion 
to fulfill his prophecy. 

A wonderful thing to consider the works of God ! 
The emperor Octavius served God's purpose ; and yet he 
knew nothing of him. 

We have here to consider the great benefits of God, 
the Almighty Father, that it hath pleased him, thro' 
his great goodness and love which he bare toward us, 
who were his enemies, that it hath pleased him, I say, to 



172 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

give unto us for our sakes his only Son into these miser- 
ies and calamities. 

Now for to come to the knowledge of this benefit, you 

must consider, first: what he was before he was incarnate 

and made man, for when we know what he was before he 

was made man, then we know what he hath done for us. 

x * * ■& * w * 

Now, let us go forward, and consider his extreme 
poverty. They came to Bethlehem where they could get 
never a lodging in no inn, and so were compelled to lie 
in a stable. Some will say now : oh, what a wicked city 
was this! what a cruel people v/as this! But when we 
consider all things well, we shall find that we be even as 
wicked as they were. For are not we given nowadays 
to covetousness, so that we regard not the poor and 
miserable people ? Therefore, if thou wilt cry out upon 
the Bethlehemites, then cry out on thyself ; for thou art 
as wicked, yea — more, more wicked than they were. 

But I warrant you there was many a jolly damsel at 
that time in Bethlehem, yet amongst them all there was 
not one found that would humble herself so much as 
once to go see poor Mary in the stable, and to comfort her. 
No, no, they were too fine to take so much pains. I 
warrant you they had bracelets and vardingals ; and were 
trimmed with all manner of fine raiment, like as there 
be many nowadays amongst us which study nothing else 
but how they may devise fine raiment ; and in the same 
season they suffer poor Mary to lie in the stable ; that is 
to say, the poor people of God they suffer to perish for 
lack of necessaries. But what was her swaddling clothes, 
wherein she laid the king of heaven and earth? No 
doubt it was poor gear ; peradventure it was her kerchef, 
which she took from her head, or such like gear; for I 
think Mary had not much fine linen ; she was not 
trimmed up as our women be nowadays ; I think, indeed, 
Mary had never a vardingal, for in the old time women 
were content with honest and single garments ; now they 
have found out these roundabouts. 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 73 

Now followeth in the text, " And there were shep- 
herds." I pray you, to whom was the nativity of Christ 
first opened ? To the Bishops, or great lords, which were 
at that time in Bethlehem? or to those jolly damsels 
with their bracelets, their vardingals, or with their 
roundabouts? No, no, they had too many lets to trim 
and dress themselves, that they could have no time to 
hear of the Nativity of Christ. But his nativity was 
revealed to the shepherds ; and it was revealed unto 
them in the night time, when everybody was at rest ; 
and here note the diligence of those shepherds ; for if 
they had been deceitful fellows, that when their masters 
had put them in trust to keep their sheep, they had been 
drinking in the ale house all night, as some of our ser- 
vants do nowadays, surely the angels had not appeared 
to them, to have told them this great joy and good tid- 
ings. Here by these shepherds all men may learn to attend 
upon their office and calling. For I tell you these poor, 
unlearned shepherds condemn many a stout and great 
learned clerk ; for these had but charge over brute beasts, 
and the others have the cure over God's lambs, and yet 
they are so careless, yea — and most part intendeth not 
to feed the sheep but to be fed of the sheep. Indeed 
there be some ministers in England which do no good 
at all, and therefore it were better for them to leave the 
benefices and make room for others. Therefore let him 
not be ashamed to learn of these shepherds; God doth 
consecrate every vocation : that he that feareth God 
shall be acceptable, though he be a poor shepherd, or 
cobbler, that is not the matter. 

And so it appeareth that we may not seek Christ in 
the glistering of this world, for what is so common as 
water?- or bread and wine? Yet he promised to be 
found there, when he is sought with a faithful heart. 
So will you have Christ ? Where shall you find him ? 
Not in the jollities of this world, but in rags in the poor 
people. Have you any poor people in your town or 
city ? Seek there among the rags, there shall you find 
him. But you must understand when I speak of poverty, 



174 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

I speak not of this wilful poverty of the monks and 
friars ; for that same was an hypocritical poverty, that 
same poverty was full of all manner of delicate things. 

* * * * ^ 

But I speak of the very poor and needy flock of Christ 
which have not wherewith to live in this world. 

Now to make an end, consider what I have said how 
Christ was born, in what poverty and in what misery. 
Remember wliat manner of Saviour he is ; namely a per- 
fect Saviour, which healeth all our sorrows, when we 
believe in Him. 

The Almighty God give us grace to live and believe 
so that we may attain to that felicity, which he hath 
promised by his Son our Saviour! To whom, with God 
the Father and the Holy Ghost, be honour world without 
end. Amen. 

For the great age of Elizabeth and James, reaching 
to the time of Charles, we have Hooker, the statesman of 
the Church ; Hall, the moralist : Donne, the pulpit schol- 
ar ; and Jeremy Taylor, the saint and poet in one. 

Hooker, to my mind, is, in many regards, the great 
type of the English Church ; " no greater in learning, less 
subtle than Andrewes, less lofty than Cudworth." But 
he represents that stately, massive, harmonious mind 
which upbuilded it. The work of " Ecclesiastical Polity " 
remains to this day like the Pyramids, alone amidst the 
barren sands of church polemics. 

It was a marvel even then. Clement VIII uttered 
what his age and ours must repeat. " There is no learn, 
ing that this man hath not searched into ; nothing too 
hard for his understanding ; his books will get reverence 



.ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 75 

by age ; for there is in them such seeds of eternity, that 
they shall last till the last fire shall consume all learn- 
ing." 

A quiet student in his parsonage, he pondered the idea 
of the Church, as builded on the Divine Law, until it 
grew not, as with the Roman, a mechanical, external 
fabric, nor with the Puritan, a formless faith, but a deep, 
large, Catholic structure. His first book unfolds the 
principle of Law; he traces it to God, and upturns the 
Calvinistic idea of an arbitrary will ; his God is one of 
Law rooted in Holiness ; he discourses of angelic law as if 
he heard the music of the spheres ; then the law of man, 
rational, free ; then the nature of all social institutions 
as rooted in law ; then the Church as the perfection of 
social harmony. In the second book he overturns, with 
clear logic, the theory of the Puritan, demanding the 
rigid prescript word of Scripture. But here he opposes 
to it no traditionary theory of modern Oxford, no devel- 
opment notion of Newman ; but a Church authority, 
subordinate to the Divine and clearly defined. The re- 
maining books are the application of these principles. 
Everywhere is the same grandeur of thought. He can- 
not speak of a Church vestment, but he bases custom on 
law. Here and there are overstrained notions of sacra- 
mental grace, but in these he is never rigid, never vague, 
always large, always judicious. In that day of tradition 
and petty strifes he stood not as a Puritan, nor as Arch- 
Bishop Laud, a verbal Anglican, but a (Broad) Church- 



I76 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

man. Yet he is never a speculative thinker. He is Eng- 
lish ; he seeks the idea in its real form. It is a work for 
the Churchman to study in this day of fragmentary 
thought and party shibboleth. It is a work for the 
statesman and the jurist. The book rises like a cathe- 
dral, with the unity of one thought, yet in all the har- 
mony of its vast proportions ; every part finished, the 
solid stone wrought, as it towers up, into the richest 
tracery, and in every niche a statue. I think the style 
of Hooker the noblest in our language. " It is the very 
incarnation of his thought ; if sometimes it is involved, 
artificial, yet it is a glorious art. Its great feature is maj- 
esty ; yet it abounds with pathos, with delicacy, with the 
nicest, rarest touches of beauty. There is in him the 
sweep of an eagle, who never dashes at once upon his 
object, but soars as if he loved to soar, circling around 
the thought, gradually approaching, until at last he stoops 
to bear it away." 

Hooker : Book First. 

Now, if Nature 'should intermit her course, and leave 
altogether, though it were but for a while, the observa- 
tion of her own laws ; if those principal and mother ele- 
ments of the world, whereof all things in this lower world 
are made, should lose the qualities which now they have ; 
if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our head 
should loosen and dissolve itself ; if celestial spheres 
should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular 
volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen ; 
if the prince of the lights of heaven, who now as a giant 
doth run his course unwearied, should, as it were, through 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. I J J 

a languishing faintness, begin to stand and rest himself ; 
if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the 
times and seasons of the year blend themselves by dis- 
ordered and confused mixtures, and the winds breathe at 
their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be de- 
feated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine 
away, as children at the withered breasts of their mother, 
no longer able to yield them relief; what would become* 
of man himself, whom these things do now all serve? 

Appetite is the Will's solicitor, and Will is Appetite's 
controller. 

We hope, therefore, that to reform ourselves, if at 
any time we have done amiss, is not to sever ourselves 
from the church we were of before. In the church we 
were, and we are so still. 

Whatsoever is unto salvation termed necessary, all 
such things if Scripture did not comprehend, the church 
of God should not be able to measure out the length and 
breadth of that way wherein she forever is to walk. But 
as to those things, which are accessory hereunto, to alter 
is no otherwise to change that way, than a path is 
changed by altering only the uppermost face thereof; 
which be it laid with gravel, or set with grass, or paved 
with stones, remaineth still the same path. 

They err, therefore, who think that of the will of God 
to do this or that there is no reason bridles his will. 

But so it is, the name of the light of nature is made 
hateful with men ; the star of reason and learning and all 
other such like helps, beginning to be no otherwise 
thought of than if it were an unlucky comet ; or as if 
God had so accursed it, that it should never shine or give 
light in things concerning our duty any way toward him, 
but to be esteemed as that star in the Revelation, called 



1/8 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Wormwood ; which being fallen from heaven, maketh 
rivers and waters in which it falleth so bitter, that men 
tasting them die therof. 

Reform. 

He who will take away extreme heat by setting the 
body in extremity of cold, shall undoubtedly remove the 
disease, but together with it the diseased too. The first 
thing, therefore, in skilful cures is the knowledge of the 
part affected ; the next is of the evil which doth affect 
it ; the last is not only of the kind, but also of the meas- 
ure of contrary things whereby to remove it. 

Hall is the moral essayist of that day ; he is a satirist, 
a wit, but his gifts are hallowed by a saintly grace. His 
''Contemplations" and "Meditations" brim with con- 
ceits, but conceit is not there. His fancy is less gor- 
geous, less sustained than Taylor's ; sharp, glancing, it 
sparkles over every homeliest object, finds sermons in 
stones, and subtle analogies in an insect ; his wit is not 
broad, or slashing, like South, but keen, subtle, reflective. 

Music by Night. 

How sweetly the music sounds in this dead season ; 
in the day-time it would not so much affect the ear; all 
harmonious sounds are advanced by a silent darkness. 
Thus the gospel never sounds so sweet as in the night of 
persecution, or in our own private affliction. 

Hypocrites. 

There are many kinds of hypocrites. Of all birds, 
the peacock makes the fairest shew, and the worst noise. 
This, indeed, is a hypocrite to the eye. There are others, 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 79 

as the blackbird, that looks black and sooty, but sings 
well. This is a hypocrite to the ear. Others please us 
much both in shew and voice, but are unpleasant in their 
carriage and condition, as the popinjay, whose colours 
are beautiful, and notes are delightful, yet it is apt to do 
mischief in scratching and biting any hand that comes 
near it. For me, let my profession agree with my words, 
my words with my actions, my actions with my heart. , 

Winnowing. 

See how in the winnowing of the wheat the fullest 
and largest grains always lie the lowest, and the lightest 
take up the highest place. It is no otherwise in reality. 
They who are most humble are fullest of grace, and 
oftentimes they are most conspicuous who have least 
substance. 

Conscience. 

It is said of the elephant, that, aware of his own de- 
formity, he cannot endure to see his own face in the 
water, but seeks for troubled and muddy channels. This 
we see well moralized in men of an evil conscience, who 
know their souls so filthy they dare not so much as 
view them, but shift off all checks of their former in- 
iquity with a number of vain excuses. 

Insects and Men. 

When I look upon these flies and gnats, let me re- 
flect what am I to my Infinite Creator more than these ? 
And if these had reason, why would they not expostulate 
with their Maker why they are only such ; why they live 
to so little purpose, and die without notice and use? I 
will thank my God for what I am, for what I have ; and 
never quarrel with him for what I want. 

Donne is at once the sublimest, the most touching, 
yet most grotesque of orators. We wonder as we read, 



l8o ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

how such sermons could be listened to, mosaics full of 
rabbinical fancies, sprinkled with Latin, stuffed with od- 
dities ; yet, at the next turn we are bowed in tears and 
awe by some grand sentence out of a heart " baptized 
with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 

St. Diuistan s. 

In the house where we stand now, the house of God 
and of his saints, God affords us a fair beam of this con- 
solation in the phrase of this text also, "they were dead." 
How applicable to you in this place is that which God 
said to Moses: "Put off thy shoes, for thou treadest on 
holy ground." Put off all confidence, all standing, all re- 
lying on worldly assurances, and consider on what ground 
you tread ; on ground so holy, as that all the ground is 
made of the bodies of Christians, and therein hath re- 
ceived a second consecration. Every puff of wind within 
these walls may blow the father into the son's eyes, or 
the wife into the husband's, or his into hers, or both into 
the children's, or the children's into both. Every grain 
of dust that flies here is a piece of a Christian ; you need 
not distinguish your pews by figures ; you need not say 
I sit within so many of such a neighbour, but I sit with- 
in so many inches of my husband's, or wife's, or child's, 
or friend's grave. 

Faith. 

As the soul is infused by God, but diffused over the 
whole body, and so there is a man, so faith is infused 
from God, but diffused into our works, and so there is a 
saint. Practice is the incarnation of faith ; faith is incor- 
porated in a body, by works. 

Ignorant and Lettered Sin. 

Truly when a weak or ignorant man departs into any 
vicious way, tho' in that case he do adhere to the enemy, 
and do serve the devil against God, yet he carries away, 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. l8l 

but a single man, and serves but as a common soldier; 
but he that hath good parts and a good education carries 
a regiment in his person, and arms and ammunition for a 
thousand in himself. 

Conversion. 

A house is not clean, tho' all the dust be swept to- 
gether, if it lie still in a corner, within doors; and it is 
not clean neither, tho' the dust be thrown out, if there 
hang cobwebs around the walls, in how dark corners 
soever; the conscience is not clean, tho' the sins be cast 
upon God's mercy, by the merits of his Son, if there 
remain in all, but a cobweb, a little lust, or sinful delight 
in the memory of those sins which I had formerly com- 
mitted. 

Heaven and earth are a musical instrument; if you 
touch a string below, the motion goes to the top ; any 
good done to Christ's poor members upon earth, affects 
Him in heaven. 

We cannot omit Cudworth, the greatest name in elder 
philosophy. Two sermons only are printed, but the first 
of these has no fellow in English divinity. We may read 
it a hundred times, when wearied with theological word 
fights, and it bears us into a purer ether, a serener air. 
It has thought enough, and splendor of word to set up a 
hundred Melvilles. 

We have much inquiry concerning knowledge in 
these latter times. There be many that speak of new 
glimpses and discoveries of truth, of dawnings of gospel 
light, and no question but God hath reserved much of this 
for the very evening and sunset of the world ; but yet T 
wish we could meantime see that day to dawn, as the 
apostle speaks of that daystar to arise in men's hearts. 



I 82 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Ink and paper can make us never Christians, can never 
beget a new nature, a living principle in us, can never 
form Christ, or any true notion of spiritual things in our 
hearts. Cold theories and maxims, dry disputes, bare 
syllogistical reasonings, could never yet of themselves 
beget the least glimpse of true heavenly light, the least 
sap of saving knowledge in any heart. 

Would we know whether we know Christ aright, let us 
consider if the life of Christ be in us. We are nowhere 
commanded to pry into these secrets, but the wholesome 
counsel given us is this, " to make our calling and election 
sure." God's everlasting decree is too dazzling an object 
for us to set our eyes upon. It is far easier and safer for 
us to look upon the rays of his goodness, as they" are re- 
flected in our hearts, and there to read the mild and 
gentle characters of God's love to us, in our love to him 
and hearty compliance in his will, as it is safer for us, if 
we would see the sun, to look upon it here below in a 
pail of water, than to cast up our daring eyes on the 
body of the sun itself, which is too radiant and scorching 
for us. 

Let us not therefore make this our first attempt tow- 
ard God and religion to persuade ourselves of these 
everlasting decrees ; for if at our first flight we aim too 
high, we shall haply but scorch our wings and be struck 
back with lightning, as those giants of old that would 
needs attempt to assault heaven. The way to obtain a 
good assurance of our title to heaven, is not to clamber 
up by a ladder of our own ungrounded persuasions, but 
to dig as low as hell by humility and self-denial. 

When our heart is once turned into a conformity with 
the word of God, when we feel our will perfectly to con- 
cur with his will, we shall then presently perceive a spirit 
of adoption within ourselves, teaching us to say, Abba, 
Father. 

* * * * * 

The great mystery of the gospel is to establish a godlike 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 83 

frame and disposition of spirit in the hearts of men ; not 
only to cover sin by spreading the purple robe of Christ's 
death and suffering over it, while it still remaineth in us 
with all its filth and noisomeness unremoved ; but to 
cleanse and free us from it. 



What then ! must we say that though he be willing, he 
is unable to rescue his crucified son now bleeding on 
the cross; then must sin be more powerful than God. 
No, surely there is a weakness and impotency in all evil, 
but a masculine strength and vigor in all goodness. Is 
God powerful to kill and destroy, to damn and tor- 
ment? and is he not powerful to save, nay, it is the 
sweetest flower in the garland of his attributes, the 
richest diadem in his crown of glory that he is mighty to 
save, and this is far more magnificent than to be styled 
mighty to destroy. For that, except it be in a way of 
justice, speaks no power at all, for the root of all power 
is goodness. 

Or must we say, lastly, that God is indeed able to 
rescue us out of the power of sin and Satan, but yet 
sometimes to exercise his absolute authority, he delights 
rather in plunging wretched souls down to infernal night 
and everlasting darkness. What shall we then make of 
the God of the whole world ? Nothing but a cruel and 
dreadful Erinnys, with curled fiery snakes about his head, 
and firebrands in his hands. 

***** 

O divine Love ! the sweet harmony of souls ! the 
music of angels ! the joy of God's own heart ! the very 
darling of his bosom, the source of true happiness! the 
pure quintessence of heaven ! that which reconciles the 
jarring principles of the world, and makes them all 
chime together ; that which melts men's hearts into one 
another. Let us express this sweet, harmonious affection 
in these jarring times, that so, if it be possible, we may 
turn the world into better music. Let us follow truth in 
love. It is not wrangling disputes that are the mighty 



1 84 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

pillars that underprop the truth ; if we would underset it 
with the holiness of our hearts and lives, it should never 
fail. 

For truth is great, and stronger than all things ; all the 
earth calleth upon truth, and the heaven blesseth it. All 
works tremble and shake at it. The truth endureth, and 
is always strong ; it liveth and conquereth for ever more. 
It is the strength, kingdom, power, and majesty of all 
ages. Blessed be the God of Truth ! 

And what shall we say of Jeremy Taylor ? We can add 
nothing, but only write down our love and reverence. He 
is the very type of English goodness. It is not for the- 
ology that we read him, although he is a noble instance 
of the semi-Arminian of his day, acute, learned, yet of 
the broadest sympathies. But it is in the " Life of 
Christ," the " Holy Living and Dying," and the " Ser- 
mons " that we read him. Poetic fancy, quickened 
by love, and warmed by a meditative thought, that 
" sleeps and broods on his own heart," are his graces. 
It is false to call him the " Shakespeare of divines " ; 
he has nothing of Shakespeare but his knowledge of the 
human soul, his strength, his dramatic expression. Nor 
is he the " Cicero of the pulpit." His is a beauty most 
artless, always drawing you to the spiritual heights 
above. His long sentences glide on, not sweeping as 
Hooker's, but gentle, suggesting new relations of the 
thought, playing with rich fancies, and then gathering 
all into some solemn conclusion. We retire into his 
sentences as into the long aisles of some open church, 
where we may kneel and pray. We wind along as in 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 85 

the ascending steps of a tower, where at each flight 
we pause and look out of a window, here a sunny 
slope, and next the spires of a far city, there the 
glimpse of the ocean, and there a river, sleeping in 
sunshine, and on its bank a group of happy children. 

For so I have seen a lark rising from his bed of 
grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes 
to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds, but the 
poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of 
an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and 
inconstant, descending more at every breath of the 
tempest than it could recover by the vibration and fre- 
quent weighing of his wings, till the little creature was 
forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was 
over ; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise 
and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an 
angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about 
his ministers here below. So is the prayer of a good 
man. 

All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, 
all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thou- 
sands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to 
every man, and to every creature, doth preach our 
funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old 
sexton, Time, throws up the earth, and digs a grave 
where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our 
bodies, till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable 
eternity. 

Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those 
things which are the instruments of acting it ; and God 
by all the variety of his providence makes us see death 
everywhere, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed 
up for all the fancies and expectation of every single 
person. 



1 86 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

* * * And how many teeming mothers have re- 
joiced over their swelling wombs,- and pleased them- 
selves in becoming the channels of blessing to a family, 
and the midwife hath quickly bound their heads and 
feet, and carried them forth to burial. * * *. 

You can go no whither but you tread upon a dead 
man's bones. 

# # # x * * * 

But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the 
clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, 
and full with the dew of Heaven as a lamb's fleece ; 
but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin 
modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe re- 
tirements, it began to put. on darkness, and to decline to 
softness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it bowed the 
head, and broke its stalk, and at night having lost some 
of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of 
weeds and outworn faces. The same is the portion of 
every man and every woman. 

* ■& •# * * # * 

Eternal God, Almighty Father of men and angels, by 
whose care and providence I am preserved and blessed, 
comforted and assisted, watch over me in my sleep, and 
whether I sleep or wake, let me be Thy servant. Be 
Thou first and last in all my thoughts, and the guide and 
continual assistance of all my actions. Preserve my 
body, pardon the sin of my soul, and sanctify my spirit. 
Let me always live holily and soberly ; and when I die, 
receive my soul into Thy hands ! 

We may well cherish some knowledge of this old di- 
vinity ; that with our poor efforts to reproduce the cos- 
tume of the past, we may gain, besides its traditions, its 
mysticism and its quaint grace, the secret of its true and 
lasting strength. Our aim should not be to imitate, but 
to learn the Christian, the English heart, which can 



ELIZABETHAN DIVINES. 1 87 

create not another 17th century, but a 19th century as 
strong, as wise, as fervent, as living, and which shall speak 
not theirs, but other words as the spirit giveth utter- 
ance. 

Written in a Volume of Latimer's Sermons. 

Chieftains of England's hero race ! whose life 

Wrestled for Christ, and in the burning flame 

Walked unconsumed ! Still have we kept your name, 
But where the spirit that shall edge our strife ? 
Within our halls to-day your armor hangs, 

The rusted pride of the old battle-field, 

The empty helm, the sleeping spear and shield ; 
While ever and anon an echo clangs, 
As if your stalwart hands the war-note pealed, 

Then dies away, a hollow funeral wail. 

Dwarfs of a little day ! that heavy mail, 
That sword of God our lean arms cannot wield, 

Only we view, awe-struck, the statue vast, 

And giant thews of a forgotten Past. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FRANCIS BACON. 

THE name of Bacon stands alone, among the leaders 
in the great age of Elizabeth, not merely as that of 
one who has made England the home of letters and 
eloquence, but who belongs to the world. It was his 
genius that opened the pathway of modern science; and 
although it has gone far beyond his beginnings, he shares 
"the immortality and continuance," in his own words, of 
the knowledge which wrought such wonders in our age. 
And yet it is a strange irony of history that one whom 
all rank among the Dii Major es should be even to-day a 
riddle alike in his personal character and in his scientific 
claims. In our own time we have had the most brilliant 
essays from the pen of writers like Macaulay, and elabo- 
rate critiques of his philosophy, from Playfair and 
Lewes. 

I do not propose to give more than a passing sketch ; it 
would be egotism should I attempt to give in any sense a 
thorough exposition of a subject that demands the range 
of science. My purpose is rather with the first great 
English prose writer. Yet I must be pardoned if I say 
that after thoughtful study I am persuaded that a large 

188 



FRANCIS BACON. ISO, 

part of the criticism, and even the eulogy, only proves 
how little he is understood. It seems to me one of the 
most needed inquiries,,in a day when a materialistic school 
has so often usurped the name of his science, and a poor 
utilitarianism sneers at any education beyond that of 
popular literature, popular art, and popular morals, to 
show, in the spirit of Bacon himself, the unity and har- 
mony of all real knowledge. 

There are few great men in whom the scientific charac- 
ter seems so utterly apart from other features. We honor 
Bacon "the Chancellor of nature " more than the Chan- 
cellor of England. Yet I think an intellectual judgment 
of such a mind can hardly be' true, without a glance at 
his biography. It is to me, I confess, a great relief that 
modern history, among the many juster verdicts which it 
has given on those much-abused names of the past, Crom- 
well and Macchiavelli, has of late done somewhat to wipe 
out the blots on Bacon's fame. I have always felt that 
the famous line of Pope, 

The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind, 

was a paradox beyond belief. The highest reach even of 
intellectual power cannot be coupled with the base vices 
charged against the writer of the " Novum Organum." We 
ought not indeed to allow our reverence for his genius to 
blind us to his moral defects ; but even the most unspar- 
ing critics owe him that justice which he begged in his last 
testament, where he bequeathed his fame to posterity, and 



1 90 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

" after some time he passed away." I have read with 
care the several works on this subject, from the earlier 
charges to the brilliant and bitter eseay of Macaulay ; and, 
on the other side, the careful writings of Spedding, with 
the latest criticism of our time. My own conviction is, 
that each of the positive charges against him is ground- 
less. It is clear that he was no traitor to his friend 
Essex, but did his best to shield him, and at last only 
fulfilled his duty as the legal servant of the court in the 
painful trial. It is clear that he was not, as Macaulay 
has caricatured him, the base sycophant of the court, or 
that a single proof can be found of his yielding to the 
king more than the royal prerogative of that day could 
claim. Nor is there any evidence that he accepted a 
bribe, or sold an office. The utmost that can be brought 
against him is, that he did not sternly reform the bad 
custom which had crept into the courts, of receiving 
gifts beyond the income of his office. It was a source of 
corruption which he should have cleansed. We have the 
right to blame him for his want of a higher morality, but 
no right to find in it a personal defilement. He was no 
better and no worse than most of the public men of his 
time. It was his misfortune at last to be chosen as the 
scapegoat, when the policy of the court put on one of its 
occasional fits of righteousness, and he was handed down 
to disgrace. 

I believe that this is a fair estimate of his character. 
If we judge him by his time, we shall have much to ex- 



FRANCIS BACON. 191 

cuse. It was a court where a royal despotism and a 
servile flattery were the fashion, even with good men, to 
a degree that amazes us to-day. We read with disgust 
the address of Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," 
to the pedant on the theme: "There hath not been since 
Christ's time any king or temporal monarch which hath 
been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and 
human." Yet if we turn to some of the addresses of 
Cranmer to Henry, or even the style of the good Hooker, 
touching God's " servant Elizabeth," and " the happy 
days of her regiment," we may know the euphuism of 
the age. 

Macaulay, in his keen essay on Macchiavelli, has shown 
the secret of the time when the same man could be a 
republican yet write the " Prince." But he might, we 
would think, be as just in his judgment of Bacon. Any 
who have studied his political essays must have felt, with 
all their insight into human nature, the Macchiavellian 
element in them, the astute statecraft, the maxims of an 
age when the public morality of England was far below 
our own. In this light we may say to the critics of Bacon, 
that they " are judging Manlius in sight of the Capitol." 
He can never be placed in the highest rank of those, like 
Plato and More, who blend with their intellectual gifts a 
moral grandeur. There was in him the clear, cold brain, 
such as may make the man of comprehensive science, the 
statesman like Cavour, the artist like Goethe, but with a 
far weaker share of the moral element. 



I9 2 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

We pass now to the life of Bacon as the reformer and 
leader of science. It is, indeed, the most wonderful 
feature of his career, that in the midst of such profes- 
sional and public work he should have found leisure for 
studies so apart from his occupation. We read that from 
his early youth he had been absorbed in scientific enquir- 
ies, and even before thirty had sketched the outlines of a 
system, to which he gave the sounding name of the 
"Greatest Birth of Time/' We cannot attempt here any 
full analysis of his works, but such a general view as will 
show his place and influence. He was a writer of most 
versatile genius, historian, essayist, as well as scientist. 
Were he to be regarded only as a master of English 
style, the " Advancement of Learning," and the " Essays " 
are the richest model of strength and grace in that fertile 
age. But we must first give study to the philosophical 
system on which his world-wide fame rests. 

To understand the work of Bacon, then, we must 
study aright the state of philosophy in his day. It is a 
great mistake to claim, as has been so often done by his 
English followers, that the first step in the change from 
the abstract systems of the Middle Age, or the first dis- 
covery of scientific laws is due to him. The reign of the 
scholastic metaphysics had been already disputed. Yet 
science had only begun to feel its way toward the knowl- 
edge of its own capacities. The sole path in which it 
had thus far achieved any great result, that of astronomy, 
was one of mathematical hypothesis more than of exact 



FRANCIS BACON, 1 93 

induction ; and it was not, as Whewell has well said, till 
the laws of motion had been afterward proved by Galileo, 
that the heliocentric system could be called science. 
Astronomy itself till after Kepler was mingled with the 
fancies of astrology. In other fields of natural inquiry 
there was little or no advance. The metaphysical no-| 
tions of substance and quality, matter and form, entered 
into every system. 

There were fragmentary hints of science, and guesses 
at the dividing lines between the realms of pure reason 
and that of nature. But there was needed a compre- 
hensive mind, large and keen enough to map out the 
whole terra incognita of knowledge, to show in this 
chaotic change from the Middle Age to the modern 
mind the method of real progress. 

The scientific treatises of Bacon should be regarded as 
parts of one whole; and indeed in the Latin original 
they so appear. Of this stately building the " De Aug- 
ments " forms the Propylaea, as a sketch of the state and 
right method of human knowledge in his day ; the 
" Novum Organum " states the laws of scientific study ; 
and the third and last part is a collection of various 
treatises on special branches of natural study. The two 
books on the " Proficience and Advancement of Learn- 
ing," first written in English and published in 1605, give 
us, without doubt, the best idea of his comprehensive 
genius, as well as his masterly style. It is hard to find 
one writer in that early age who comes so near to the 



194 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

perfect English utterance. He blends with a keen wit 
and a wealth of expression rising often to poetic fulness, 
that clearness of thought, that massive strength which 
kept him from any waste of words. The prose of Milton 
pours like a torrent over the banks, but with Bacon it 
rolls as a great river within its boundaries. Beyond 
almost any other writer he can express a weighty idea in 
a short sentence. He can be homely or sublime at will. 
His power of statement is admirable, and each illustra- 
tion is an argument. He has the usual faults of his time, 
the tendency to verbal conceits, and a parade of classic 
learning. Yet we feel them less with him because they 
are lost in the greater breadth of his own thought. 

No juster criticism, indeed, has been given us of the 
" bent of those times toward copia more than weight," 
the " rhetorical delicacies " of Car and Ascham, than 
Bacon in this very treatise. No writer has more avoided 
that first distemper of learning, when men study words 
more than matter, yet reached more nearly the union of 
matter with form. 

But to pass now to the argument of the book. It is 
not easy to give a condensed sketch, because it contains 
at once so vast a range of learning for that time, yet at 
each step such subtle suggestions in special branches of 
knowledge. We may not regard his division of the 
powers of the mind or the departments of science to-day 
as thorough. But it is a complete picture of the state of 
knowledge then, and its insight into the methods of dis- 



FRANCIS BACON. 1 95 

covery since, is at times a marvellous foresight. He 
opens with a discourse on the excellency of learning, 
taking up the several charges against it. The divine 
attacks human learning as leading to unbelief, especially 
because the contemplation of second causes weakens the 
dependence on God. Bacon answers, that true knowledge 
is not to be refused because of false. There is " nothing 
parcel of the world denied to man's inquiry." Although 
the knowledge of a first cause is the highest, yet as God 
works only by second causes, man must begin with these. 
V A little knowledge may lead to Atheism, but further 
proceeding bringeth back to religion." It is to be noted 
here that many passages like this are repeated in the 
" Essays" ; and in almost all cases, they seem choice and 
favorite ideas of Bacon. He insists, again, in answer to 
the next class of objectors, that knowledge does not mar 
practical wisdom. The true scholar will never be a man. 
of the antipodes, treading against the world we live in. 
There are several noble thoughts here on the real in- 
fluence of men of learning, compared with the baser 
standard of the self-styled practical men. 

Indeed, it is very hard to believe when we read Bacon's 
high and almost Platonic ideal of the scholar, that we are 
listening to a wily politician and a sordid judge. He re- 
bukes the disposition of authors to ask favor of the great 
in the words, " Books should have no patrons but truth, 
and reason." But now he passes from the defence of 
learning to its three special defects. He rebukes the 



I96 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

fantastical tendency of his time to spend too much on 
words, a disease which came in with the revival of letters 
and had affected English authors. He rebukes the con- 
tentious spirit, the vice of the School-men, leading to those 
" vermiculate" questions, that are like the spider's web, 
spun out of her own bowels, with no profit for real learn- 
ing. But more than all he unmasks the third disease, 
that of untruth. Unlike modern philosophy, he holds 
that " Truth of being and truth of knowing are one, 
differing no more than the direct beam and the beam 
reflected." All knowledge, which rests on mere tradition, 
or things weakly warranted, legendary history, fanciful 
science, come under this head. Let not " Time, the 
Author of Authors, be deprived of his due, which is 
further and further to discover truth." Other errors are 
probed with the same keen hand. The false reverence 
of antiquity, or the love of novelty, is an idle excess. 
" Antiquitas sceculi juventus mundi." " Those are the 
ancient times, when the world is ancient." But the 
greatest error of all is the mistaking the end of knowl- 
edge. And thus he concludes his first book by summing 
from the Word of revelation and the proofs of human 
history the dignity of learning ; and most of all " in that 
whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is im- 
mortality." "The verses of Homer have continued 
twenty-five hundred years, or more without the loss of a 
syllable or letter. It is not possible to have the true 
pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar ; but the 



FRANCIS BACON. 1 97 

images of men's wit and knowledge remain in books. 
Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they 
generate and cast their seeds in the minds of others " : 
* * * and "if the invention of the ship was thought so 
noble, which carrieth riches from place to place, how 
much more letters, which, as ships, pass through the vast 
seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of 
the wisdom, illuminations, inventions, the all of the 
other?" 

In his second book, Bacon now enters on what he calls a 
" general perambulation of learning." All knowledge 
has three divisions, History, Poesy, Philosophy ; cor- 
responding to the faculties of Memory, Imagination, and 
Reason; and Divine Learning, like human, maybe said 
to embrace History, Parables, Doctrine. Several critics, 
like Stewart, have called this division arbitrary. It cer- 
tainly does not correspond to the classification of modern 
science ; yet the classification does not essentially affect 
the worth of his reasoning. History is now regarded 
under four heads, Natural, Civil, Ecclesiastical, and Liter- 
ary, the last of which is deficient. In regard to the his- 
tory of nature, he counsels more attention to the irregu- 
lar phenomena, " as it were bounding nature in her 
wanderings." " Small things discover great better than 
great discover the small," as Aristotle searches for " the 
nature of a commonwealth first in a family and the sim- 
ple conjugations of man and wife, parent and child. 
Even so the nature of this great city of the world must 



1 98 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

be first sought in small portions." Civil history in Bacon's 
time was little more than legend ; and his criticism shows 
the distance between his ideas and ours of historic sci- 
ence. His verdict on church history is excellent. " I 
would that the virtue and sincerity of it were according to 
the mass and quantity." In his remarks on poetry there 
is no thorough analysis. His saying is a fine one, that it 
" doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews 
of things to the desires of the mind, whereas reason doth 
buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things." 
He has here, too, a keen critique, which our modern 
myth-hunters would do well to read, " that the fable was 
first and the exposition then devised." 

But it is when Bacon comes to the province of reason, 
" the judicial place or palace of the mind," that we see 
the clearness of his analysis. He divides philosophy into 
divine, natural, and human. Before considering them, he 
remarks that as all these parts are " like branches of a 
tree, that meet in one stem," there should be one science, 
Philosophia Prima, which embraces the common prin- 
ciples of all. 

It is not easy to know what was the exact province of 
this Baconian science. The instances he gives us are 
rather fanciful than real ; as a coincidence between 
cumulative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and 
geometrical proportion ; the musical principle of a solu- 
tion of discords as " alike true in affection " ; and " the 
delight of the quavering of a stop in music the same with 



FRANCIS BACON. 1 99 

the playing of light on water." Yet the whole passage 
is full of suggestion. It opens a field, even yet scantily 
worked, of the metaphysics and physics, the unity of our 
mental and moral conceptions with those of sense, which 
might be our best antidote to the materialistic school of 
Bain. 

In his view of divine truth Bacon recognizes mysteries 
beyond the contemplation of nature, or ground of human 
knowledge ; and lays down the sober rule that we are 
not " to draw them down to our reason," but " to advance 
our reason to the divine light." In the sphere of 
Natural Philosophy he distinguishes "the mine and the 
furnace," the inquisition of laws and production of 
effects. Science is physical and metaphysical. Physic 
considers what is matter and therefore transitory ; Meta- 
physic, what is form, and therefore abstracted and 
fixed. This distinction of matter and form is Aristo- 
telian : it corresponds to our own of phenomenal and real. 
Physical science deals with efficient causes ; metaphys- 
ical, with formal and final causes. He distinctly recog- 
nizes the sphere of metaphysical knowledge, and its 
benefit as teaching us the unity of truth, as well as the 
freedom of the mind above the material. But he cen- 
sures the intrusion of metaphysics into the proper study 
of nature, in the inquiry into final causes ; and thinks 
the method of Democritus truer in this respect than that 
of Piato or Aristotle, who mixed one his theology and 
the other his logic with physical science. It is with 



200 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

striking insight that Bacon has anticipated Kant in classi- 
fying mathematics pure as a branch of metaphysics ; and 
his remarks on geometry and arithmetic are worthy of 
full study. He passes now to the third division of 
human knowledge, or the study of man. All knowledge, 
he says, is one light, of which the natural is the direct 
ray, the divine the refracted, and the human the re- 
flected. Human knowledge is but a portion in the 
continent of nature ; and we should accept all such par- 
titions as lines and veins, rather than sections and sepa- 
rations. The study of the mind should therefore be 
together with that of the body. In this part of his 
treatise Bacon has given us the anticipation of the 
methods of modern science. His observations on the 
meagre knowledge in his day of medicine, anatomy, and 
physiology are striking. The substance of the mind is 
not to be known by philosophy, but its powers of under- 
standing and reason, will, appetite, and affection are the 
true objects of knowledge. 

From this he passes to the practical side of human 
knowledge. He considers first the exercise of the rational, 
second of the moral powers. The arts of intellectual 
training are invention, judgment, memory, tradition. 
Under the head of invention comes the discussion of the 
true nature and place of induction. Bacon maintains 
that the induction of Aristotelian logic is fruitless so far 
as real knowledge is concerned. Middle propositions 
cannot be deduced from general principles in subject of 



FRANCIS BACON. 201 

nature by syllogistic reasoning. The result is only that 
of the academies, the denial of certainty in objects of 
sense. Induction in science and judgment are the same art. 
Logic has its true sphere in reasoning from general prin- 
ciples to particulars in analytics. 

We should give much time to this treatise, because it 
alone shows us the harmony of Bacon's philosophy. The 
misconceptions of it have come from the fact that the 
" Novum Organum," which has only to do with the study 
of nature, has been so interpreted as to obscure all other 
parts of his system. We can now turn to the " Novum 
Organum," a shorter treatise, divided into concise aphor- 
isms. He examines the method of scientific study. 
There are two mothods of reasoning, the a priori, which 
descends from abstract ideas to particulars, the a posteriori, 
which ascends from particulars to generals. Each has its 
true place. But for the investigation of nature the 
a priori method is useless. To begin with ideas of sub- 
stance, quality, action, passion, can only end in abstract 
results. Science must begin with the real objects. It is 
on this then he rears his experimental method, or Induc- 
tion. The process is, first, the accumulation of all the 
facts ; next, these must be compared to discover their 
form or the general and permanent quality. This inquiry 
does not concern cause, which is metaphysical, but only 
form. To find the form we begin by exclusion. Thus, if 
we seek the quality of transparency, we exclude porosity 
or fluidity, as the diamond is transparent yet solid. After 



202 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

exclusions have been made, enough to determine the 
reckoning, one principle is assumed as the form, and we 
then reason from it synthetically to account by it for the 
phenomena. Such is the outline of the method. Bacon 
adds a comparative sketch of the various classes of facts. 
Some are of more value to determine the case. 

But before passing to a summary of the Baconian 
philosophy, we should touch at least on his other writ- 
ings, which deserve a fuller sketch If his scientific 
works had not made his name so great, these writings 
would have still given him a foremost rank among Eng- 
lish masters of thought and style. 

His mind is equally at home in the laboratory, or in 
the world of men ; and, indeed, it is in all the same order 
of genius, the clear, keen, comprehensive brain. His 
" History of Henry VII " is by far the best piece of such 
writing in his time ; it is not so Rembrandt-like a portrait 
as More's of Richard, but full of insight into English his- 
toric life, and a grasp of constitutional law. But for most 
readers it is in the " Essays " that he will live. In certain 
features they stand alone in this field of writing. There 
is nothing of the gay paradox of Montaigne, the sounding 
verbiage of Seneca, or the witty sophistry of Rochefou- 
cauld. They express the " practical reason " of the 
English mind. Each sentence is beaten gold. One of 
his observations on men and manners is like a chalk out- 
line by Michael Angelo. And as a model of English 
style, the " Essays " are unrivalled, although I think 



FRANCIS BACON. 203 

they have less of stately eloquence than the " Advance- 
ment of Learning." 

A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to Atheism, 
but depth in philosophy bringeth them about to religion. 

There be two false peaces or unities : one when the 
peace is grounded but in an implicit ignorance, for all 
colours will agree in the dark ; the other, when it is pieced 
up on a direct admission of contraries on fundamental 
points, for truth and falsehood in such things are as the 
iron and clay in Nebuchadnezzar's image, — they may 
cleave, but they will not incorporate. 

Time is the greatest innovator, which moveth so 
round, that a froward retention of custom is as turbulent 
a thing as innovation. 

Revenge is a kind of wild justice. 

Adversity is not without its comforts and hopes. 
We see in needle-work and embroideries it is more pleas- 
ing to have a lively work on a sad and solemn ground, 
than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a light- 
some ground. 

Envy is as the sunbeams, which beat hotter on a 
bank, or steep rising ground, than upon a plot. 

It is the nature of self-lovers, as they will set an house 
on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs. 

It is good to commit the beginnings of all great 
actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to 
Briareus with his hundred hands. 

Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, 
and wise men use them. 

There is but one case when a man may commend him- 
self with a good grace, and that is in commending virtue 
in another, if it be such whereunto himself pretendeth. 



204 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Men rather discharge their minds than impart their 
minds. 

Neither is money the sinews of war, when the sinews 
of men's arms in base and effeminate people are failing. 

It is well, when nobles are not too great for sov- 
ereignty nor for justice, and yet maintained in that 
height, as the insolency of inferiors may be broken upon 
them before it come too fast upon the majesty of kings. 

The best composition and temperature is to have 
openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit, dissimu- 
lation in seasonable use, and a power to feign, if there be 
no remedy. 

If we have understood the spirit of Bacon's philosophy 
in his own writings, we are ready not only to give it its 
true worth in that age of dawning science, but to see the 
strange mistake of so many critics, even to our own day. 
It has been the fashion of the whole school of sensuous 
philosophy, since the time of Condillac to Mill and Bain, 
to claim him as the great mind to whom the modern 
world owes its emancipation from the a priori methods 
of metaphysics, and the beginning of the inductive 
science. We hear this claim repeated in a more popular 
way by a class of writers, of whom Macaulay is the most 
popular oracle, who love to talk of the philosophy of 
common-sense and the age of practical knowledge. Nor 
is it less strange that this one-sided view of the Baconian 
method has been very largely allowed by the opponents 
of the sensuous school. We might expect it from a fierce 
champion of Aquinas like De Maistre. But it is the 



FRANCIS BACON. 205 

criticism of a sober historian like Ueberweg, who dis- 
tinctly names Bacon as the father in philosophy of 
Hobbes and the large family of materialists. We cannot 
indeed call it so sad that he should be so slandered in his 
intellectual as he was in his moral fame ; but it is a sore 
wrong, and it is quite as due to him to defend him 
against treachery to spiritual truth as treachery to his 
friend Essex. 

It was the design of Bacon in that early time of re- 
vival in art and science " to make," in his own words, " a 
small globe of the intellectual world, with a note and de- 
scription of those parts which seem not constantly occu- 
pate, or not well converted by the labour of men." He 
pointed out the mutual relations of all knowledge, and 
the laws that must govern the scholar in the study of 
each. And as his own special aim lay in the study of 
nature, and he saw clearly the boundless field just open- 
ing for discovery in its hitherto unknown truth, he sought 
to clear away the mistakes of the older philosophy in this 
direction, and found the true method of experiment. 

He was, in his own phrase, an " Instaurator of Science." 
This is his just claim. The fruit of his genius is in the 
whole gathered history of science since his time. His 
opus majus, greater than his own written treatises, is in 
the work of Newton, Davy, Lagrange, Agassiz, Faraday. 
He was, to borrow again his prophetic words, " the ser- 
vant of posterity " ; and posterity has acknowledged him 
as the master, whose principles have guided them to the 



206 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

knowledge of the stars, the marvels of chemistry, the se- 
cret of the Kosmos. That title of the most comprehensive 
work of our time gives us the nearest likeness to Bacon. 
It was his task, like Humboldt, to show the unity and 
harmony of all the manifold aims of human knowledge 
with the great whole of the Divine Maker, the correlation 
of forces in the search after truth, which is as true a law 
in the history of the mind as it is in nature. None can 
rob him of this praise. There are men of science at this 
day, who deny his exact knowledge in much of his own 
experimental detail. It is true that, although no poor 
student of nature, many have surpassed him in their 
special inquiries. The habit of large generalization is 
seldom found together with skill in the microscope. His 
well-known doubt as to the truth of the Copernican 
theory proves his lack of thorough astronomical study, 
although we have the best evidence from his own words 
that his doubt was by no means a denial, but based on 
the fact, that it was as a mathematical hypothesis open to 
difficulties, which were indeed only met by later discov- 
eries in physical astronomy. Without doubt, his own in- 
ductive method has been largely improved by science. 
Yet it is enough that for his day he opened the way. 
Indeed, in this respect he is far greater than Humboldt ; 
for he not only gives us a larger map of human knowl- 
edge than the survey of nature by the great German, 
but he wrote at a time when there was needed the genius 
to explore the unknown more than to gather the known. 



FRANCIS BACON. 207 

His task in science was that of the discoverer who 
started in his small caravel from the port of Palos across 
the mysterious ocean, and planted the first colony of a 
new world. 

In this light we can justly meet the often-repeated 
mistakes as to the philosophy of Bacon. To say that he 
is the author of an inductive science which has taken 
the place of metaphysical study, is to misunderstand the 
character of both. The object of the Baconian method, 
it is clear from his own statements and the drift of his 
reasoning, is the exact knowledge of the world of nature. 
It is as absurd to think that the science which explores 
the unseen world of thought, the nature of God, the laws 
of the mind and the moral being, has been displaced by 
this just thinker, as to say that the progress of chemistry 
has set aside civil history. Each has its sphere. There 
is a method in the study of the mind. There is a method 
in the study of the outward phenomena. We need only 
turn to the writings of Bacon to show that his purpose 
was to distinguish them, to guard against the intrusion of 
scholastic notions into the field of fact. " The wit and 
mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the con- 
templation of the creatures of God, worketh according to 
the stuff, and is limited thereby ; but if it work upon 
itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, 
and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable 
for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance 
or profit." — " Advancement of Learning," B. 1, o. ^o. 



208 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

It was against such "subtle, idle, unwholesome, and 
vermiculate questions" as had usurped the place of 
"good and sound knowledge " he wrote. But that he 
in no sense denied the worth of metaphysical study, or 
the truths it sought, is as plain from another sentence. 
"For Metaphysic, we have assigned unto it the inquiry 
of formal and final causes, which assignation as to the 
former, may seem negatory and void, of which opinion 
we will take this hold, that the invention [discovery] of 
forms is of all other parts of knowledge the worthiest to 
be sought, if it be possible to be found. As for the 
possibility, they are ill discoverers that think there is no 
land when they can see nothing but sea. But it is mani- 
fest, that Plato in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit 
of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry, that forms 
were the true objects of knowledge, but lost the real fruits 
of his opinion, by considering of forms as absolutely 
abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined 
by matter, and so turning his opinion upon Theology, 
wherewith all his Natural Philosophy is infected. But 
if any shall keep a continual watchful and severe eye 
upon action, operation, and the use of knowledge, he 
may advise and take notice, what are the forms, the dis- 
closures of which are- fruitful and important to the state 
of man." Nothing can be clearer than the distinction 
here. Bacon held, as all true science holds to-day, that 
the study of all the problems of knowledge must begin 
with the facts, and that in this method an exact indue- 



t FRANCIS BACON. 209 

tion in the range of physical fact would teach us the 
border line of sure metaphysical knowledge. But he did 
not hold fruitlessness of all knowledge beyond the physi- 
cal. He declares " that Physic doth make inquiry only 
as to the material and efficient causes," but that the 
science, " which supposeth further in nature a reason,! 
understanding, and platform," is " of all the worthiest to 
be sought." We have here the true difference between 
him and the whole school of Agnostic science, which 
claims that the sphere of an inductive science is the only 
one, and its result the utter denial of knowledge beyond 
the phenomenal. This clear definition of the sphere of 
physical and metaphysical inquiry settles the vexed 
question concerning his method. 

It has been often claimed, that Bacon set aside the 
syllogistic logic of Aristotle, and put in its stead the in- 
ductive reasoning. This is a mistake. He rejected the 
syllogism as a fruitless process in scientific discovery. It 
was useless to reason as Aristotle had done, from the gen- 
eral conception of a circle to the motion of the planetary 
bodies, without the exact physical induction of the facts ; 
and thus he complained that the Greek sage had " made 
the world out of his categories." Natural philosophy 
had been only a guesswork. But he was so far from re- 
jecting the syllogism in its true place, that he has himself 
clearly defined its worth. " There are two ways of inves- 
tigating truth : One from sense and particulars rises to 
general axioms, and from these settled principles judges 



2IO ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

and finds middle axioms. The other from sense and par- 
ticulars calls out axioms by rising constantly and by de- 
grees, and at last arrives at generals. This is the sure 
way." Again, " there being but four kinds of demonstra- 
tion, that is, by the immediate consent of the mind in 
sense, by induction, by syllogism, and by congruity, every 
one of these hath certain subjects in the matter of sciences, 
in which respectively they have their chiefest use ; and 
certain others from which they ought to be excluded." 
Had the idea of Bacon been clearly grasped, the confused 
notions of his method would have been easily escaped. 
Induction is not a natural process, substituted for an arti- 
ficial machine of Aristotelian logic. It is simply the cau- 
tious process by which, in experimental inquiry we gather, 
compare, and verify the facts to reach a conclusion in its 
nature empiric and nothing more. Syllogism is the in- 
tellectual process by which we apply the general and 
known to the particular. It is the explicit form in which 
all reasoning is logically cast ; and we may as well talk of 
grammar as artificial, because, like Moliere's bourgeois 
gentilhomme, we have been using grammar in our speech 
without knowing it, as call the syllogism an invention of 
the schools. 

But I will not enlarge on what Whately has long ago 
shown in his " Logic." I wish only to point out the 
defect in the argument of Whately himself, as it touches 
the Baconian method. Induction is, he insists, from 
the idea of the formal logic in English schools, merely 



FRANCIS BACON. 2X1 

the collecting of the facts from which we afterward reason. 
We can put any induction into syllogism, by supplying 
the major premise. Undoubtedly. But this does not 
in the least explain why Bacon refused the syllogistic 
and preferred the inductive form. It is readily under- 
stood from his own sentence, already cited. The " sure 
way" in experimental science was that which " rises con- 
stantly and by degrees and at last arrives at generals." 
I cannot better state it than in the words of Mr. Lewes, 
because his admission reveals the very point where, as I 
conceive, the positive philosophy he teaches is utterly in 
contrast with the conclusions of Bacon. " It is in the 
way the major premise is established that we must seek 
the real difference between the syllogistic and inductive 
methods: and that difference is between a priori and a 
posteriori. Every one who has read Bacon, knows that 
his scorn for the syllogism is not as a form of ratiocina- 
tion, but as a means of investigation." This is to touch 
the question with a needle. It was not the function of 
physical science to search after the truths only knowable 
by the a priori or synthetic reasoning ; it had nothing to 
do with a final cause, substance, unity, infinity, but only 
with efficient cause, phenomena, relativity, succession. 
On this path it could not reach demonstration in the ab- 
solute sense, but only the certitude of experience. A 
logic, therefore, which by its very structure dealt with 
universals, was always misleading. The metaphysics of 
the schools, when they introduced the notions of abstract 



212 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

form, essence, quiddity, and the like, into the science of 
nature, must end in barren theory. This is the true posi- 
tion of the scientist. But it was not Bacon's design in 
this to deny the function of a priori reasoning in its own 
sphere. It is the right place of logic, because it deals 
with universals, to be the organum of reason in all ques- 
tions of deductive knowledge. Induction must give it 
its material, its groundwork of empiric fact ; but the 
truths of the unseen world are beyond its province. Such 
was the design of Bacon. 

And as his view was ayjust one as against the scholastic 
systems of his time, which forced their theories on sci- 
ence by a barren logic, so it is true against the science, 
which by the same dogmatic process forces its induction 
into the field of a priori thought. I do not know a 
more striking proof of this than in the criticism of Mill 
on the Baconian method. No one can deny that the in- 
ductive method as he announced it has been greatly per- 
fected at the hands of science. Its range is larger, and 
its processes nicer at this day. But the chief objection 
of Mill is that Bacon "has left no room for the discovery 
of new principles by way of deduction at all." It is in 
the deductive sciences of mechanics, astronomy, optics, 
acoustics, he claims, that " the higher and middle prin- 
ciples are by no means derived from the lowest, but the 
reverse. In some of them the highest generalizations 
were those earliest ascertained with any scientific exact- 
ness; as, for instance (in mechanics), the laws of mo- 



FRANCIS BACON, 213 

tion." Yet he grants that " these general laws had not 
at first the acknowledged universality which they ac- 
quired after having been successfully employed to ex- 
plain many classes of phenomena, to which they were not 
originally seen to be applicable." Now, this very admis- 
sion seems to me enough to prove the principle of Bacon. 
The Copernican hypothesis must wait, as we have said 
before, for the inductive test of physical astronomy. The 
application of geometry and algebra has led to a wide 
range of scientific discovery, yet in every case the gen- 
eralizations have been corrected and verified by the 
inductive process. 

We may now sum up our view of the great master of 
science, and his influence on the after-time. It is utterly 
to misread him, when he is classed with the school of 
sensuous or materialistic philosophy in England. There 
is nothing in his writings which allies him as a systematic 
thinker with the movement of Hobbes in the days of 
Charles, or with the yet later empiricism of Locke. All 
the doctrines of this school, and its results at home in 
the scepticism of Hume, or in France in the grosser 
theories of Cabanis, rest on the notion that our senses 
are the sole sources of knowledge, and our ideas only 
" transformed sensations." Whatever may be the ques- 
tion as to the fundamental truth or error of the " Essay 
on the Understanding," it is an analysis of the human 
mind, which sets aside by a subjective process all knowl- 
edge beyond experience. The philosophy of Bacon, as 



214 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

we have seen, has nothing in common with such a method 
of study. It distinctly admits truths above sense. It ac- 
knowledges a reason in man that can know the ideas of 
cause, unity, infinity ; and indeed we owe to Bacon that 
distinct use of the words reason and understanding which 
has been so laughed at in Coleridge. The only likeness 
between him and the school of Locke is their common 
dislike of abstract reasoning, and their appeal to expe- 
rience. But the unlikeness is far greater. The one was 
destructive ; the other constructive. The one made an- 
other theory of metaphysics ; the other stood apart from 
all theory. The one ended in Hume and D' Holbach ; 
the other in Newton. Nor do we see any likeness in 
Bacon to the later school of positive science, which has 
its leaders in Mill, Spencer, and Bain. Undoubtedly 
there are points of contact more than in the elder sensa- 
tional school, from the fact that the growth of Positivism 
has been connected with the marvellous advance of 
physical discovery in our age. We claim, as the secret of 
modern science, that so far as it has verified its researches 
in the most fruitful fields of knowledge, in physiology, 
chemistry, geology, biology, it has kept the sober prin- 
ciple of Bacon. 

Its influence has been vast, not only in the domain of 
outward nature, but in helping toward a sounder study 
of the mind ; and in social ethics, by teaching, as Bacon 
did, the connection of soul and body.- But for this 
very reason we can never allow Bacon to be classed with 



FRANCIS BACON. 215 

the school of so-called positive science. There is not a 
single principle which they have advanced that is not the 
denial of his method. It is easy enough to find passages 
in his books that can be tortured into a resemblance to 
modern theories. We turn, for instance, to the chapter 
in which he says, that the " natural philosophy of 
Democritus and some others seemeth to me in par- 
ticularities of physical causes more real and better in- 
quired than that of Aristotle and Plato, whereof both 
intermingled final causes, the one as a part of Theology, 
and the other as a part of Logic." We might infer from 
this that Bacon was an Atomist of the Atheistic school, 
but turning to the next sentence we read : " Not be- 
cause those final causes are not true, and worthy to be 
inquired, being kept within their own province, but be- 
cause their excursions into the limits of physical causes 
hath had a vastness and solitude in that track." It was 
the limit of physical certainty that he wished to fix, not 
to deny the truth of a Divine Maker. In the same 
spirit Cudworth, the Platonist, accepts the atomic theory 
in physics. In the same spirit the author of the " New 
Chemistry " is careful to show that atoms are the ulti- 
mate point of his science, but cannot explain the unseen 
cause. And it is precisely so we find at every step the 
impassable chasm between the science of Bacon and the 
dogmas of the modern positivist. Mr. Spencer declares, 
that the last result of human knowledge is to find abso- 
lute being, a homogeneous passing into heterogeneous. 



2 1 6 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

Bacon declares, that " in the entrance of philosophy, 
where the second causes, next unto the senses, do offer 
themselves to the mind, if it dwell and stay there, it may 
induce some oblivion of the highest cause ; but when a 
man passeth on farther and seeth the dependance of 
causes and the works of Providence, then he, according 
to the allegory, will easily believe that the highest link 
of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of 
Jupiter's chair." 

But I cannot close this sketch without a word on a 
point perhaps of more interest to the general mind than 
more scientific questions. It is not merely the mistake 
of the philosophy of Bacon by the physical dogmatists 
that claims our criticism, but the more popular notion, 
that he is the teacher of that self-styled wisdom of com- 
mon-sense, of practical utility, of which we hear so much 
in our day. We are told that our age is specially marked 
by its scorn of speculative philosophy, its inventions of 
useful arts, its commerce, its real discoveries ; and chief 
among the sages to whom we point as the fathers of the 
modern time is Bacon. I suppose that we are indebted 
for this popular idea of the inductive philosophy to the 
essay of Macaulay. Written in 1837, it has survived un- 
til now, and persons who gather opinions as easily as pos- 
sible have taken from him at once their impressions of 
his bad character and his admirable practical spirit. It 
may seem immodest in me to call in question so great a 
master of rhetoric, but I can accept his opinion neither in 



FRANCIS BACON. 217 

the one case nor the other. I am forced to say, that I 
look on his criticism of Bacon's philosophy as one of the 
most astounding pieces of glittering sophistry in the range 
of modern essays. It is the claim of this writer, borrow- 
ing a phrase from the " Novum Organum," that all men- 
tal and moral science from Plato and Aristotle to the day 
of the great Englishman was barren theory, and that the 
work of Bacon is to have given us the philosophy of 
fruit. Nor does he leave us in any doubt as to what 
he means by fruit. He does not even care for the 
science of Bacon as an addition to the intellectual 
wealth. Even the method of induction was for Macau- 
lay nothing new ; every man who had eaten mince-pie 
and learned the cause of his indigestion, could reason 
as well as Bacon. He passes in review the greatest 
names of speculative thought, and he tells us that the 
inventor of a good wine whey or of a hospital chair 
is more useful than the verbiage of Socrates. We may 
allow much for the rhetoric of a fine writer; we may not 
even hold a scholar responsible for such nonsense ; but 
we must not allow the wisdom of Bacon to be debased by 
a utilitarianism so poor as this. What is utility? What 
is fruit? There is, as we have shown in our whole criti- 
cism, a noble spirit in the great author of the " Novum 
Organum," which led him beyond the word-battles of the- 
ory, into the aims of real knowledge ; but none would 
have scorned more fully than he so vulgar a notion of 
utility as this. 



2 1 8 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

I need only cite that most stately passage from the 
'■• De Augmentis " to show his idea of the useful. " Men 
have entered into a desire of knowledge, sometimes as a 
natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes to 
entertain their minds with variety ; and sometimes for 
ornament and reputation ; and most times for lucre and 
profession ; and seldom sincerely to give account of their 
gift of reason to the benefit and use of man ; as if there 
were more sought in knowledge a couch whereon to rest 
a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrasse for a wander- 
ing and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair 
prospect ; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise 
itself upon ; or a fort on commanding ground for strife 
and contention ; or a shop for profit or sale ; and not a 
rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the re- 
lief of man's estate." There is nothing in such an idea 
of the useful akin to the spirit of Macaulay. It does 
not lose sight of the higher good of knowledge in its 
lower results. It can appreciate a wine whey, or a 
popular history of England, without placing them above 
the education of the mind and heart. We might indeed 
take Macaulay's view on its moral side, and show that 
the practical shrewdness he praises in the science of 
Bacon would have been quite likely to produce the mer- 
cenary character he so strangely assaults. We might go 
back to the memorable story of Plato in the court of 
Dionysius, and ask if a philosophy which kept the Greek 
true to his ideal purity is not more fruitful than one that 



FRANCIS BACON. 2IO, 

could range over nature, and prove the Chancellor of 
England and of England's thought an earthworm. But 
we will not accept his criticism on the one or the other. 
The utilitarianism he boasts is the fruit of an age which 
has turned the Baconian science into "'a shop for barter 
and sale " ; which believes, as a modern sage said, only 
in " the Trinity of bread, water, and fresh air " ; which 
holds the eternal and immutable morality of " Poor Rich- 
ard's Almanac " ; which worships Bentham as its sage, 
Buckle as its historian, and Macaulay as its orator. 

It is against such critics that I seek to justify the fame 
of the great Englishman. For us at least they shall not 
be the interpreters of him who was the first interpreter 
of true science in England. 



[THE END.] 



PERIODS IN THE HISTORY 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 

The Anglo-Saxon Period, 600-1066. 

From the consolidation of the Saxon dialects to the Norman Conquest. 
Noteworthy authors, or books, are : 

Ccedmon. 

Beowulf. 

The Saxon Chronicle. 

Alfred, 

sElfric. 

Good authorities on the language and literature of this period are , 
Freeman's "Old English History " and " Norman Conquest"; Green's 
"Making of England"; Kemble's "Saxons in England"; Hughes' 
"Alfred the Great" ; Marsh's "Origin and History of the English Lan- 
guage" ; Ten Brink's " Geschichte der Englischen Litteratur" ; Grein's 
" Bibliothek der Angelsachsischen Poesie " ; Grein's " Dichtungen der 
Angelsachsen " ; Dietrich's " Anglosaxonica " ; Kemble's "Anglo-Saxon 
Poetry"; Thorpe's " Analecta Anglosaxonica"; Thorpe's " Beowulf " ; 
Alfred's "Orosius" and "Boetius"; Earle's "Two of the Saxon 
Chronicles" ; "Saxon Leechdoms," ed. O. Cockayne; "Aelfric's Homi- 
lies," ed. Thorpe. 

The Anglo-Norman Period, 1066— 1500. 

Layamon's " Brut,"ed. Sir F. Madden. 

" The Ormulum." 

"The Ancren Riwle." 

"The Surtees Psalter." 

" Rhymed Chronicle " of Robert of Gloucester. 

' ' Rhymed Chronicle " of Robert of Brunne. 



222 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

" Golias Poems " of Walter Mapes. 

Wright — " Political Songs of England." 

Wrtght — " Specimens of Lyric Poetry." 

Wright and Halliwell — " Reliquiae Antiquse." 

Morris — " Old English Homilies." 

Morris — " Old English Miscellany." 

Morris — " Specimens of Early English." 

Morris — '* Early English Alliterative Poems." 

Morris — " Legends of the Holy Rood." 

Early English Text Society's Publications. 

Oliphant — "Old and Middle English." 

Earle — " Philology of the English Tongue." 

Morris — " Outlines of English Accidence." 

Morley — " Writers before Chaucer." 

Stubbs — "Select Charters." 

Guest — " English Rhythms." 

Malory — " Morte d' Arthur." 

Ellis— "Early English Metrical Romances." 

RiTSON — "Ancient English Metrical Romances." 

" Thornton. Romances " — Camden Society. 

Ludlow — " Popular Epics of the Middle Ages." 

Percy — " Reliques of Ancient English Poetry." 

Ritson — " Scotish Song." 

Ritson — " Robin Hood Ballads." 

Sir Walter Scott — " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.' 

Rinlock — " Ancient Scottish Ballads." 

Motherwell — " Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern." 

Child — " English and Scottish Ballads." 

Publications of the Chaucer Society. 

Clarendon Press Edition of " Piers Plowman." 

A. J. Ellis — " Early English Pronunciation." 

Morley — " English Writers from Chaucer to Dunbar." 

Ward — " English Poets." 

Gower — " Confessio Amantis. " 

Warton — " History of English Poetry." 

Barboure's — " Bruce." 

Gawin Douglas — "Poetical Works." 

James I — " The Kinges Quhair." 

Skeat — " Specimens of Early English." 

Lord Berner's " Froissart." 

Wyclif — " Translation of New Testament." 



HISTORICAL PERIODS. 223 

1500-1660. 

Prose. 

Tyndale — " Translation of the Bible." 

Latimer — " Sermons." 

Jewel — " Apology." 

Cranmer — " Revision of the Bible." 

More— History, " Richard III." 

Roger Ascham — " Scholemaster." 

Sir Philip Sidney — " The Arcadia," " The Defense of Poetry." 

Hooker — " Ecclesiastical Polity." 

Sir Walter Raleigh — " History of the World." 

Francis Bacon — " Essays," " Advancement of Learning," etc. 

Spedding — " Life and Times of Francis Bacon" ; " Letters and Life of 
Francis Bacon." 

Selden— " Table Talk." 

" The English Bible," Authorized Version. 

Fuller — •« Holy and Profane States." 

Cudworth — " Works." 

Jeremy Taylor — "Life of Christ," " Holy Living and Dying," " Ser- 
mons." 

Herbert— "The Temple." 

Hall — "Contemplations and Meditations." 

Donne — " Sermons." 

Izaak Walton — " Lives," "The Complete Angler." 

Sir Thomas Browne — " Religio Medici." 

Clarendon — " History of the Rebellion." 

Lord Herbert of Cherbury — " De Veritate," " Life of Henry VIII." 

Poetry. 

Hawes— " Pastime of Pleasure." 

Skelton — " Political Satires." 

Lyndesay— " The Dreme," " Thrie Estates," "The Monarchic" 

Surrey and Wyatt — " Poetical Works." 

Gascoigne— " The Steel Glass," etc. 

Sackville— " The Mirror of Magistrates." 

Spenser — " The Faerie Queene." 

Sidney— "Astrophel and Stella." 



224 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 

Fulke GREVILLE — " Poems of Monarchy and Religion." 
Greene — " Lyrical Poems." 
Marlowe — " Poetical Works." 
Lodge — "Poetical Works." 

Daniel — "Sonnets to Delia," "Epistle to the Countess of Cumber- 
land." 

Drayton — " Battle of Agincourt," " Odes," " Polyolbion." 

Raleigh — " Poetical Works." 

Chapman — "Iliad" and "Odyssey." 

Donne — " Poetical Works." 

Ben Jonson — " The Forest," " Underwoods." 

Vaughan — " Poetical Works." 

Drummond of Hawthornden — "Poetical Works." 

Beaumont and Fletcher — "Lyrical Poems." 

Browne — " Pastorals." 

Wither — Poetical Works." 

Wotton — "Poetical Works." 

Carew — " Poetical Works." 

Suckling — " Poetical Works." 

Marvell — " Poetical Works." 

Herrick — " Hesperides." 

Milton — " Poetical Works." 

Drama. 

" Miracle Plays," "Mysteries" — Chester, Coventry, Towneley Collections. 

Bishop Bale — " Kynge Johan." 

" Moralities — " Mariage of Wit and Wisdome." 

John Heywood — " Interludes." (" The Four Ps.") 

Nicholas Udall — " Ralph Roister Doister." 

George Peele — " David and Bethsabe." 

Thomas Kyd — "Spanish Tragedy." 

Christopher Marlowe — "Doctor Faustus," "Edward II," " Tam- 
burlaine," " The Rich Jew of Malta." 

Thomas Dekker — " Old Fortunatus," " Satiro Mastix." 

Dekker and Webster — " Westward Hoe." 

John Marston — " Eastward Hoe," " Insatiate Countess." 

John Webster — " Duchess of Malfy," " White Devil." 

Thomas Heywood — " The Woman Killed by Kindness," " Fair Maid 
of the West," " Royal King and Loyal Subject." 



HISTORICAL PERIODS. 



225 



George Chapman — " Caesar and Pompey," " Bussy d' Ambois." 
John Ford— " The Broken Heart," " The Lady's Trial." 
Philip Massinger — "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," "The City 
Madam." 
John Fletcher — " The Two Noble Kinsmen." 
Francis Beaumont — " Triumph of Love." 

Beaumont and Fletcher — " Philaster," " The Faithful Shepherdess." 
John Lyly — " Sappho and Phao," " Midas." 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM S SONS. 

FOR LIBRARIES, TEACHERS, STUDENTS, AND FA MIL V USE. 

COMPREHENSIVE, COMPACT AND CONVENIENT 

FOR REFERENCE. 

THE HOME ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

OF BIOGRAPHY, HISTORY, LITERATURE, 
CHRONOLOGY AND ESSENTIAL FACTS. 

COMPRISED IN TWO PARTS. 



I>rice in Cloth, $9 50 ; in half* Morocco, $14 50. 

SOLD SEPARATELY OR TOGETHER. 



Arabian, Persian and Turkish, 

American. 
Heathen Deities and Heroes and Her 

oines of Antiquity. 
Tabular Views of Universal History. 
Biographical Index, General. 

The Same of Artists. 

Schools of Painting in Chronological 

Tables. 



PART I 

THE WORLD'S PROGRESS 

A Dictionary of Dates, being a Chronological and Alphabetical Record 
of all Essential facts in the Progress of Society, from the beginning of 
History to August, 1877. With Chronological Tables, Biographical Index, 
and a Chart of History, 

By G. P. PUTNAM, A.M. 
Revised and continued by F. B. Perkins. In one handsome octavo volume 
of 1,000 pages, cloth extra, $4.50; half morocco, $7.00. 

contents: 

The World's Progress, 1867— 1877. 
The Same 1851—1867. 

The Same from the Beginning of His- 
tory to 1851. 
United States Treasury Statistics. 
Literary Chronology, arranged in Ta- 
bles: Hebrew, Greek, Latin and 
Italian, British, German, French, 
Spanish and Portuguese, Dutch, 
Swedish, Danish, Polish, Russian, 
U A more convenient labor-saving machine than this excellent compilation can 
scarcely be found in any language." — N. Y. Tribune. 

"The largest amount of information in the smallest possible compass." — BuffaU 
Courier. 

" The best manual of the kind in the English language."— Boston Courier. 
" Well-nigh indispensable to a very large portion of the community." — N Y. Cour- 
ier 6 s Enquirer. 

THE CYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY 

A RECORD OF THE LIVES OF EMINENT MEN 
By PARKE GODWIN. 

New edition, revised and continued to August, 1877. Octavo, containing 
1200 pages, cloth, $5.00 ; half morocco, $7.50. 

The Publishers claim for this work that it presents an admirable combination of 
compactness and comprehensiveness. The previous editions have recommended them- 
selves to the public favor, as well for the fulness of their lists of essential names, as for 
the accuracy of the material given. The present edition will, it is believed, be found still 
more satisfactory as to these points, and possesses for American readers the specia! 
advantage over similar English works, in the full proportion of space given to erai 
aent American names. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAMS SONS. 

Studies in German Literature. By Bayard Taylor. 
Edited by Marie Taylor. With an introduction by the Hon. 
Geo. H. Boker. Octavo, cloth extra, . . . . $2 

" A thoroughly excellent work, admirably fulfilling the purpose for which 
it was written. * * * It forms the best introduction to German literature the 
English student can lay hands upon. Leaves nothing to be desired by the 
aspiring student who wishes for a guide, or by the general reader who is desirous 
of trustworthy and vigorous sketches of the leading features of the literature of 
Germany. " — London Spectator. 

" Without having received the last touches of the author's hand, it is con- 
spicuous for the modest learning, admirable judgement, profound insight, and 
wise criticism." — N. Y. Tribune. 

" The work of a painstaking scholar, who can select with rare discernment 
what should come to the foreground of attention, and has the power of express- 
ing his own views with exti-aordinary grace." — Literary World. 

" Admirable for their clear, discriminating taste and strong equal criticism. 
* * * T] ie author's power of imparting to others his own comprehension 
of an artist's scope and quality is something very rare." — Springfield Re- 
publican. 

" These lectures are intended to serve as an 'introduction ' to the literature 
of Germany, and a more enticing one it would be hard to find." — N. Y. Heiald. 

"It is full of the most subtle and suggestive criticism." — Applcton's 
Journal. 

" The volume has a very particular value, for it treats on subjects concern- 
ing which Mr. Taylor was in every way qualified to speak with the voice of au- 
thority. " — Phila. Evenutg Telegraph. 

" There could be no better guide placed in the hands of any desiring to 
begin the study of this great and rich literature." — Harper s Weekly. 

"It is a masterly exhibition of Mr. Taylor's practical scholarship." — 
Hartford Courant. 

" These lectures, are in character, elementary and popular * * * and show 
the author's wide knowledge of German." — Hartford Times. 

" They are full of the products of wide and accurate scholarship, and show 
a subtlety and depth of analytical power." — Detroit Free Press. 

' The lectures on Lessing, Schiller and Gcethe, are each worth the price of 
the book." — Brooklyn Eagle. 

" The volume is admirably adapted to the needs of students of German 
Literature." — Boston Evening Transcript. 

" The touch of Bayard Taylor is always so vivifying that it is delightful to 
the mature scholar as well as to the student." — Milwaukee Sentinel, 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Jan. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 

.11 iWggfeRMNHiak'lk uimid 






^n 


. 






'JUr 






